Deepfake: Zelensky Tells Ukrainians to Put Down their Weapons

Deepfake: A deepfake video that appeared to depict Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaiming peace on Twitter has reappeared. Meanwhile, this week, Meta and YouTube removed a deepfake video of Ukraine's president discussing capitulation to Russia.

What do these clips tell about the degree of disinformation in the war, given that both sides utilize distorted media? And, more importantly, do people believe them?

Many Ukrainians mocked President Zelensky's poor portrayal.

Volodymyr Zelensky comes behind a podium and tells Ukrainians to put down their weapons. His head is larger and more pixelated than his body and his voice is deeper.

Deepfake used by Russia Convince Ukrainian to Surrender

Deepfake is strategically used by the Russian government to convince Ukrainian to surrender in a war. The actual President Zelensky labels it a "childish provocation" in a video posted to his official Instagram account. The Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications, on the other hand, has warned that the Russian government may deploy deepfakes to persuade Ukrainians to submit.

Ukraine Surrenders, Russia wins in Deepfake war

Deepfake war convincing the public that Ukraine surrendered in front of Russia. In a Twitter thread, Meta security-policy chief Nathaniel Gleicher stated that the deepfake had been "immediately evaluated and deleted" for breaking the company's policy against misleading altered media.

YouTube also stated that it had been deleted due to violations of its misleading standards.

According to Nina Schick, author of the book Deepfakes, it was an easy triumph for the social-media corporations since the video was so crude and quickly detected as fake even by "semi-sophisticated viewers."

"The platforms may make a great deal about dealing with this when they aren't doing more on other sorts of disinformation," she added.

"In this conflict, there are so many different sorts of deception that haven't been refuted." Even though this video was terrible and nasty, that will not be the case shortly."

Even so, it would "erode faith in legitimate media."

"People begin to feel that everything may be fabricated," Ms. Schick explained.

"It's a new weapon and a powerful type of visual misinformation that anybody may use."

What is a Deepfake?

Deepfakes employ deep learning artificial intelligence to swap the likeness of one person in the video and other digital media with that of another. There are fears that deep fake technology may be exploited to make fake news and deceptive, counterfeit videos.

MyHeritage, the business behind the deepfake program that lets users animate ancient images of relatives, has now introduced LiveStory, which allows for the addition of voices.

Deepfakes in politics are still quite uncommon. However, to illustrate the technology's capabilities, a deepfake of former US President Barack Obama was constructed.

Deepfake Detection on Zenlensky Video

"The Zelensky was a worst-case deepfake situation," says Witness.org program director Sam Gregory.

"It wasn't very excellent for a start, because it was quickly identified."

"And it had been discredited by Ukraine, and Zelensky had refuted it on social media, so it was a simple policy takedown for Facebook."

However, in other areas of the world, journalists and human-rights organizations were concerned that they lacked the means to detect and refute deepfakes.

Detection tools examine a person's movements or check for things like the machine-learning process that developed the deepfake.

"The lack of 100 percent proof either way and people's inclination to think it was a deepfake, represent the problems of deepfakes in a real-world scenario," Mr. Gregory explained.

"A few weeks ago, President Putin was converted into a deepfake, and it was largely viewed as a comedy - but there is a fine line between satire and deception."