We have come a long way in fooling people from the "Is it live or is it Memorex?" days of the 1970s, when we were asked to guess if a video of Ella Fitzgerald breaking a glass when hitting a high note was live or on a Memorex cassette tape.
Perhaps the most unforgettable use of Photoshop – another fakery technology, invented in 1987 – was the 1989 TV Guide issue with Oprah Winfrey on the cover. Except it was Oprah's head superimposed on 1960s heartthrob Ann-Margaret's body – with neither woman's prior knowledge or permission.
'Deepfake' videos, fast becoming the rage, leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other technologies to, for example, superimpose the face of a real person onto the face of another to make it appear that the real person is saying or doing something they did not in fact do. The technology is so advanced that it can be quite difficult to tell whether it is "live ... or Memorex."
In "Is It Real – Or Is It Deepfake" written by Marc P. Serber and published by The Cyber Express Magazine, Rimon Partner Jon Mechanic discusses some of the implications of deepfakes in Hollywood and media.
Download the full Cyber Express article here.
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