Barack Obama called Trump a “total and complete dipshit.” But why would Barack Obama do such a thing? It wasn’t him, and in fact it was someone online using new technology that is scary. 

To be able to change your face and voice are now available with a few clicks, including the ability to look and talk and even make fake nudes about people. 

Deepfakes can ruin a person’s imagine and is a huge issue as they can make huge threats to every single person in society. Deepfakes can seriously damage someone’s career and social status in terms of society as they are able to really hurt someone, and proving to make this a big issue that society needs to put a big spotlight on. 

“I have never felt this scared in my life,” freshman Furkan Ay explains.  “This is absolutely terrifying,” said Samatha Cole from Vice. “Something huge and terrifying to many people that could change the world.” These people are students, but they all have one thing in common: they are all teenagers. Now they have to hide their bodies from the public. 

“I am shocked as this could really turn out to be like huge social issue,” Reef Virgo, a freshman, explains. 

“This is beyond believable,”  a freshman student Theo Lisick says with shock.  

“The main issue is deep fakes, they can really affect us in a huge and negative way,” says a 14 year old freshman named Luca Perreira Frears  . Deepfakes are really changing people’s perception and could change the world as we know it. Having deepfakes could change how people look, talk, and facial expressions. 

Deep Fakes are going to affect  the human race hugely. Deepfakes is artificial intelligence that makes convincing fake audio and video as another person very easy.   

If your able to copying someone by their face , these videos could have very dangerous potential. Deep fakes have the power to change the world, as they can be used in anything such as in movies. But they also can enter into someones life and really ruin it.  

Deep Fakes, according to Wikipedia were made around 2017.  Voicing and face images can be recorded and made into a deepfake and used to manipulate someone. Deepfakes have gained popularity as they have been used in many ways and forms.  These videos have both pros and cons. 

Deepfakes have time and time again been used in many film related productions. In “Star Wars, The Last Jedi,” deep fakes were used to include Leia, Carrie Fisher, into the movie because she had passed away before the movie was finished. Another example is Bill Hader, a Saturday Night Live actor, who was being interviewed on Conan O’Brien’s show, he was deepfaked into being Arnold Schwarenegger. It really surprised the whole world.  

Deepfakes can be used in many sorts of ways like for criminal activities . They can use this to capture a person’s face and voice audio to hack into their private lives and do lots of damage.  

According to Wsj.com, A CEO of U.K.-based energy had thought he was talking to his boss. But really a criminal was recording his voice and trying to use to hack into this company.  The criminal was close to escape with lots of money but was caught, and this shows how deepfakes can be very lethal. 

There have been multiple cases of Deep Fakes causing damage, including one of Donald Trump. In this video, Donald Trump was offering advice to Belgium on the issue of climate change. 

He says, “As you know, I had the balls to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement,” he says, “and so should you” as he stares directly into the camera. The video was created by a Belgian political party called the “Socialistische Partij Anders.” This video caused an outrage for people because they thought the American president had weighed in on Belgium’s Climate policy. Later on, the political party said they created the fake video to grab people’s attention, then redirect them to an online petition calling on the Belgium government to take more urgent climate action.

 Danielle Citron is a professor of law at the University of Maryland, and she says that the videos could weaken democratic society hugely. She started to think about Baltimore in chaos in 2015 after the killing of Freddie Gray, and she said that if at the moment a deepfake was made of the police chief saying something racist, the place would’ve exploded in chaos.

This is just one of the terrible possibilities of deep fakes, others also say that deep fakes are going to interfere with elections in the future. 

On elections, according to Vice, Citron said, “What keeps me awake at night is a hypothetical scenario where, before the vote in Texas, someone releases a deep fake of Beto O’Rourke having sex with a prostitute, or something. Now, I know that this would be easily refutable, but if this drops the night before, you can’t debunk it before serious damage has spread.”  

 Even though Deep Fakes could have terrible effects on the whole world, according to researchers from the University of Albany deepfakes can be identified by a lack of blinking. Proving 

But according to the New York Times, it will just get harder to identify deep fakes because of all this new A.I technology. 

Companies like Google and Facebook have tried to make detectors to detect these fake videos, but when they were put to the test, they failed more than 40% of the time. According to Vice, deepfakes can be detected by an odd way of movement in a person’s mouth or other body parts but it’s very hard to detect from the human eye. The University of Southern California’s detector is one of the best working detectors which has been tested to be 90% accurate.

The most troubling one out of all the cons is Deepnudes. Deepnudes started in December 2017, when someone who called themselves “Deep Fakes” used A.I technology to put the faces of celebrities onto people in pornagraphic videos. Later that year, someone created an app called DeepNudes, which was free to the public. 

DeepNudes are used to take someone’s look and remove clothes and post it online. 

Many women’s photos suffer have been posted online without their consent.  It takes a photo of their body and edits it to seem like they are naked and posts online showing the whole world to see. The victims of these photos get scared. 

According to vice.com a  women said,  “I felt like thousands had seen me naked, I felt like my body wasn’t mine anymore.”  

It is most popular with celebrities as they post their bodies online on social media a lot. 

A freshman at the iSchool named Furkan Ay shares his view about social and media and deep fakes: “[I] See a lot of times when people would post fake news on Instagram and sometimes even in the news like a rapper named Dababy. He was on the news about something related to his nudes being posted online but really it was a pornstar who deep faked it into being Dababy.” Lots of celebrities around the world are affected by deep fakes in many ways especially about deepnudes. 

“Also deep fakes are really hurtful as they can damage someone’s imagine by having their voice copied. Its not cool or acceptable,” Furkan explains. Overall, they suffer a lot. Sophomore at the ischool named Piper said “ I didn’t know about deep fakes and deep nudes but they are definitely dangerous to society” said showing how dangerous and unheard deep fakes are, these are just some examples of the millions that don’t know about deep fakes. “I don’t wanna post on instagram no more as I feel unsafe,” says Yuljanse ramos a sophomore. “I didn’t think someone can make fake nudes of somebody,” says Sabrina also a sophomore. 

Should we be worried about this whatsoever? According to the guardian, deepfakes should kept close tabs on and really not be forgotten about as it is an important issue.

Deepfakes can even be used to hack politics and change major events with fake information. Around the spring of 2019 a digitally altered video/ or a deepfake, was made showing Nancy Pelosi, one of the speakers of the US House of Representatives, was apparently drunk through a speech was posted on all kinds of social media.

When asking Ischool students many felt someway about this topic.

 Another student named Reef Gordon, a freshman, had said, “ Wow deepnudes can really change someones life in a negative way.” As lots of people across the world have fake nudes posted online of them.  

Not only does our average person suffer but also even the biggest social media stars and celebrities. An innocent involving world famous model Kim Kardasion was deepfaked into making people believe that she doesn’t care about the haters. “”When there’s so many haters, I really don’t care because their data has made me rich beyond my wildest dreams,” Kardashian says in the manipulated video, according to Vice.com. Deepfake should be a top priority as it with a few clicks can destroy many peoples images and could possibly steal as shown in deep crimes. Companies can be destroyed and so can women online with fake nudes of them posted. What does  mean for the public? “Deepfakes help us keep people like Stan Lee and Carrie Fisher in movies that we enjoy, while it hurts us in stealing and posting fake nudes.” Reef and Luca are freshman at the ischool and both believe it can change the world in a negative and positive way.