"Deepfake Challenges 'Will Only Grow'"

According to a new report titled "Deepfakes and international conflict" by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and foreign policy experts at Northwestern University and the Brookings Institution, new deepfake technology is significantly more insidious than people think. The authors of the new report discuss deepfake videos, images, and audio, as well as the security challenges associated with them. The experts expect the technology will soon be used on a far larger scale, particularly in military and intelligence operations. The experts have provided security officials and policymakers with suggestions on managing the new technology. They emphasized the need for the US and its allies to adopt a code of conduct for the use of deepfakes by governments. The authors emphasize that the ease with which deepfakes can be developed for specific individuals and targets and their rapid spread, most recently through a form of AI known as stable diffusion, point to a future in which all states and nonstate actors will be able to deploy deepfakes in security and intelligence operations. Therefore, security officials and policymakers must take the necessary precautions. The Northwestern co-authors include AI and security expert V.S. Subrahmanian, the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Buffett Faculty Fellow at the Buffett Institute of Global Affairs, and Chongyang Gao, a Ph.D. student in Subrahmanian's lab. The Brookings Institute co-authors include Daniel L. Bynam and Chris Meserole. Subrahmanian, the leader of the Northwestern Security and AI Lab, and his student Gao developed a new algorithm called Terrorism Reduction with Artificial Intelligence Deepfakes (TREAD) that researchers can use to create their own deepfake videos. By producing convincing deepfakes, researchers can gain a deeper understanding of the technology in the security context. This article continues to discuss the new report outlining recommendations for defending against deepfakes. 

Northwestern University reports "Deepfake Challenges 'Will Only Grow'"