The first was Mark McKeague, a colleague in The New York Times’s research and development department. I started by downloading FakeApp and enlisting two technical experts to help me. The user then signed off with a shrug: “Godspeed rebels.” Making DeepfakesĪfter lurking for several weeks in Reddit’s deepfake community, I decided to see how easy it was to create a (safe for work, nonpornographic) deepfake using my own face. The post raised the ontological questions at the heart of the deepfake debate: Does a naked image of Person A become a naked image of Person B if Person B’s face is superimposed in a seamless and untraceable way? In a broader sense, on the internet, what is the difference between representation and reality? “This is turning into an episode of Black Mirror,” wrote one Reddit user. But while out in the open, it gave an unsettling peek into the future. The deepfake creator community is now in the internet’s shadows. And a few expressed moral qualms about putting the technology into the world.
Others moved their videos to alternative platforms, rightly anticipating that Reddit would crack down under its rules against nonconsensual pornography. Some users on Reddit defended deepfakes and blamed the media for overhyping their potential for harm. A post titled “3D face reconstruction for additional angles” sat next to videos with titles like “(Not) Olivia Wilde playing with herself.” Pornhub, Twitter and other sites quickly banned the videos, and Reddit closed a handful of deepfake groups, including one with nearly 100,000 members.īefore the Reddit deepfake groups were closed, they hosted a mixture of users trading video-editing tips and showing off their latest forgeries. Recently, FakeApp set off a panic after Motherboard, the technology site, reported that people were using it to create pornographic deepfakes of celebrities. Lawmakers have already begun to worry about how deepfakes could be used for political sabotage and propaganda.Įven on morally lax sites like Reddit, deepfakes have raised eyebrows. It’s not hard to imagine this technology’s being used to smear politicians, create counterfeit revenge porn or frame people for crimes. Since a version of the app appeared on Reddit in January, it has been downloaded more than 120,000 times, according to its creator.ĭeepfakes are one of the newest forms of digital media manipulation, and one of the most obviously mischief-prone.
FakeApp makes it free and relatively easy to create realistic face swaps and leave few traces of manipulation.
Social media apps like Snapchat include some rudimentary face-morphing technology.īut in recent months, a community of hobbyists has begun experimenting with more powerful tools, including FakeApp - a program that was built by an anonymous developer using open-source software written by Google. Until recently, realistic computer-generated video was a laborious pursuit available only to big-budget Hollywood productions or cutting-edge researchers. The hybrid was uncanny - if you didn’t know better, you might have thought it was really her. Obama’s face onto the body of a pornographic film actress. It was created using a program called FakeApp, which superimposed Mrs. The video, which appeared on the online forum Reddit, was what’s known as a “deepfake” - an ultrarealistic fake video made with artificial intelligence software.
Then, the former first lady’s doppelgänger began to strip.
Wearing a low-cut top with a black bra visible underneath, she writhed lustily for the camera and flashed her unmistakable smile. In the room was Michelle Obama, or someone who looked exactly like her. The scene opened on a room with a red sofa, a potted plant and the kind of bland modern art you’d see on a therapist’s wall.