As Deepfakes Flourish, Countries Struggle With Response

Researchers at M.I.T. Media Lab trained an artificial intelligence system with images of a devastated Aleppo, Syria, and then asked it to show what other cities would look like after similar destruction. It transformed Boston (shown) into a deepfake wasteland. Photo by M.I.T. Media Lab.

New York Times
Deepfake technology — software that allows people to swap faces, voices and other characteristics to create digital forgeries — has been used in recent years to make a synthetic substitute of Elon Musk that shilled a cryptocurrency scam, to digitally “undress” more than 100,000 women on Telegram and to steal millions of dollars from companies by mimicking their executives’ voices on the phone.

In most of the world, the authorities can’t do much about it. Even as the software grows more sophisticated and accessible, few laws exist to manage its spread.

China hopes to be the exception. This month, the country adopted expansive rules requiring that manipulated material have the subject’s consent and bear digital signatures or watermarks, and that deepfake service providers offer ways to “refute rumors.”

But China faces the same hurdles that have stymied other efforts to govern deepfakes: The worst abusers of the technology tend to be the hardest to catch, operating anonymously, adapting quickly and sharing their synthetic creations through borderless online platforms. China’s move has also highlighted another reason that few countries have adopted rules: Many people worry that the government could use the rules to curtail free speech. MORE