While technology is a boon for society, it’s not always used with good intentions. Among its many evils is the scourge of deep fakes – creating a doctored photo or video of a person by using his/her photos or voice samples.
A 20-year-old Mumbai student was arrested last week for editing a girl’s face into an obscene video and threatening to share it online.
The girl had noticed that her photo on the photo-sharing site Instagram had been doctored and used in an obscene video by an unidentified account user.
The user had sent this video to the girl’s account and threatened to upload it on social media if she did not do his bidding.
He then forced her to resend the video to another social media account, and sent her some vulgar messages on her Instagram account, an official told PTI.
In most cases, an incident like this is powerful enough to traumatise the victim with the impending threats of societal taboo and familial reputation looming large if the video were to go viral. However, on October 9 – the day of the incident – the girl rushed to Lokmanya Tilak Marg police station and reported the incident.
Further probing uncovered other such incidents where the 20-year-old had attempted to do the same with two other girls.
According to Mumbai Live, investigations have revealed that the accused undertook the use of an artificial intelligence (AI) technique known as “DeepFake” to create the obscene video. The technique is used for the purpose of combining and superimposing images and videos on other source images and videos to create a doctored version of the same.
The easy availability of such tools is likely to bolster a dangerous new chapter in India’s history where fake news has already become the norm. While Twitter and Facebook are working on a policy to detect fake news, there is considerable scientific research being undertaken to detect doctored videos as well.
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