While technically curious, from legal/societal point of view to me there doesn't seem to be huge difference between having a deepfake or a lookalike actor on the other end. And with old-fashioned telephone presumably has had this impostor problem since forever.
The story misses the actually interesting part: how did they establish contact and initiate the call in the first place? It’s not like you or I can simply call up <country>’s parliament on Zoom. There’s gotta be some channel of authentication other than “dude in video call looks like some politician” (or some politician’s staff of whom they can find some photos on Google Images), too.
It‘s not like any one of those politicians knew his Chief of staff. Additionally, he was probably being translated from his native Russian, or speaking mediocre English. It would not have been difficult for any random person to „imitate“ him. The main Qualification would seem to be the ability to not burst out laughing. A deep fake of an actual public figure would be a different matter entirely.
IIRC, in a previous installment of this drama, Navalny himself somehow phoned the people who poisoned him and got them to admit doing so, how it was done (underpants) , and their reasons for failure (it was a murder plot).<p>Someone has gotta do a movie of this.
If I'm not mistaken, this is the first time deep fake technology has been used to carry out a disinformation attack on politicians.<p>I wonder if the actual video conferences have been recorded. I'm very curious to see them.
Deep fakes seem destined to be the next source of political disinformation. The trouble is that by the time the 'deep fake' has been debunked, it has already made it's impact by spreading at rocket speed across social media. It's quite chilling what the consequences could be for political campaigns and debate.<p>This is an example of 'deep fakes' of two British politicians. If you look closely you can spot something amiss in the way they speak. Lots of people won't be look closely though. And this is from 2019 - the technology can only have improved since then.<p><i>The fake video where Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn endorse each other</i> (2019)<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-50381728" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-50381728</a>
This seems like the first instance of deep fakes fooling politicians on a geopolitical scale. The repercussions of this are huge.<p>I really wonder how big the impact of this technology is going to be, especially since corona has made online meetings even more prevalent.
So if they went all out of their way to create a deepfake, what was their mission?<p>I assume if you employ a deepfake, you also have a 'fake' message to put across.
Still many sites require upload of a photo holding up a government ID as a proof of identification. Time to stop this nonsense and turn to real cryptographic solutions.
The original source article <a href="https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/kamerleden-spraken-met-een-nepversie-van-de-stafchef-van-navalny-deepfake-of-dubbelganger~b57ab1ab/" rel="nofollow">https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/kamerleden-spra...</a> has some interesting remarks. Because there are no video recordings its very hard to investigate this situation. The article also asks the question if it was: just an actor, a deepfake or an actor with general video altering software and that there is no way of knowing without the source material.<p>An other video in the personal time of the Dutch Prime minister <a href="https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/04/23/door-schrijver-gepubliceerde-en-verwijderde-video-van-rutte-blijkt-niet-nep-a4041126" rel="nofollow">https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/04/23/door-schrijver-gepublic...</a> (disable JS for no paywall) there was a similar situation. Many people thought it was a deepfake or that the voice was altered or copied from an other video but later the government put out an statement that the video was real.<p>I wanted to share this because I saw multiple people claim that PGP may solve all problems but the problem is both ways. Real videos are also being labeled as deepfakes. So yes PGP will help solve a part of the problem but there is a bigger trust issue that needs to be solved.
Well, this is interesting. Just as people all around the world realized they don't need to travel all that much.<p>Though, it doesn't seem all that hard to verify who you're talking to. Perhaps there's a great business opportunity for a "secure, verified" communication app.
It's crazy that everyone here seems to blindly accept that this was actually a deepfake just because the news says so. Odds are this wasn't a deepfake.
Think how much easier this would be with a mask on like our clown in chief who is the only world leader to wear a mask on the recent Zoom call with world leaders.