“With the help of advanced AI, deepfake videos and images are being increasingly created by taking advantage of content posted on public social media profiles. While setting social profiles to private and limiting them to only known friends or contacts can help limit overt exposure, it isn’t a guarantee that someone among them won’t repost it or use it for nefarious purposes.
It is reassuring to see the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) sent an advisory to social media companies urging them to tackle deep-fake content. In the advisory, the government also warned social media intermediaries that failing to remove deepfake information from their platforms might result in penalties such as losing safe harbour rights, among other things. Such stringent advice from the government can help to flatten the curve of data being exploited to create deepfake content.
As a protective measure, digitally signed videos can be a way to verify that content can be trusted. Much like how certificates are used to validate website security and email communications, the same could be used for validating digital media. As technology evolves and deepfake production times shrink and quality vastly improves, a point may come where it’s impossible to distinguish a deepfake from real recorded content; therefore, validating content as true using a signing or verification process is needed.”
- Aaron Bugal, Field CTO – Asia Pacific and Japan, Sophos
