Skimm This: A Deep Dive Into Deepfakes

It’s August 9th. Today, we Skimm’d… deepfakes: 

• In the run-up to the 2020 elections, you may have heard officials worrying about  deepfakes – videos or images or audio created by AI in which people appear to say things they never really said. We’ll explain the origin of the term ‘deepfakes,’ and how they’re made.

• We’ll also dive into the headaches that deepfakes can cause for policymakers, celebrities, and voters, and how we might have to change our laws to deal with them. 

theSkimm: Imagine a computer downloading footage or photos of you from the internet and using them to create a video of you saying something you’ve never said. Sounds more than a little sinister, right? It might not be a sci-fi thing of the future anymore, thanks to advances in deepfakes. On today’s episode, we take a deep dive into deepfakes – what they are, how they are made, and the headaches they can cause. We’ll look at why lawmakers are concerned about their possible effect on elections, but also how researchers are enlisting other computers in the fight to help us spot - and stop - these videos. 

This is a special episode from our Notes series on theSkimm’s app, which is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.