Shallowfakes:
With the Lok Sabha elections scheduled, social media platforms are abuzz with misinformation, mostly in the form of shallow fakes.
- Like deepfake, shallowfake is also an act of morphing people’s pictures and using them for malicious activities.
- But unlike deepfake, which is created by using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) software, shallowfake can be created by simply using basic editing software.
- They are made with existing technologies for example, a conventional edit on a photo, slowing-down a video to change the speech patterns of an individual or more often, relying on mis-captioning or mis-contextualising an existing image or video, claiming it is from a time or place which it is not from.
- And precisely because of this easier way to create them, many experts consider shallowfakes to be bigger threats than deepfakes.
- The term ‘shallow’ implies the quality of such fakes, which are lower in quality compared to deepfakes.
- They are used to create a false proof of identity or address, including photo ID documents like passports, driving licences etc.
- It is also used to create fake supporting evidence to support a claim or transaction, like contracts, agreements and invoices for services, no claims discount certificates, etc.
- Deepfakes are a compilation of artificial images and audio put together with machine-learning algorithms to spread misinformation and replace a real person’s appearance, voice, or both with similar artificial likenesses or voices.
- The term “deepfake” combines the deep learning concept with something fake.
