Anticipating and addressing the ethical implications of deepfakes in the context of elections

Diakopoulos, Nicholas; Johnson, Deborah G.

doi:10.1177/1461444820925811

Cited by 84 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…The present study was guided by media and information studies theories and methods. The discourse around video and image manipulation has fomented panic about the use of technology in national and state politics, for example, elections (Diakopoulos & Johnson, 2021). The present study suggests that the more common risks have disproportionately affected women, people of color, LGBTQIA individuals, and those fighting established power (Maddocks, 2020;Paris & Donovan, 2019).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 64%

“…For some time, computer graphics systems fed by data systems have been able to parse and generate images, even realistic images, from an existing video. Prior to 2017, this was the province of the major motion picture studios, which used the technology to entertain mass audiences, and computer science research laboratories, which used it to develop computer vision (Bansal et al, 2018;Diakopoulos & Johnson, 2021;Paris & Donovan, 2019;Suwajanakorn et al, 2017;Vaccari & Chadwick, 2020). In 2017, consumer-grade and sometimes free, image manipulation software using machine learning gained public attention as pornographic videos with the faces of famous women grafted onto pornographic actors' bodies appeared on Reddit (Cole, 2017;Maddocks, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Configuring Fakes: Digitized Bodies, the Politics of Evidence, and Agency

Paris

2021

Social Media + Society

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This comparative case study analysis used more than 200 examples of audiovisual manipulation collected from 2016 to 2021 to understand manipulated audiovisual and visual content produced by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and unsophisticated methods. This article includes a chart that categorizes the methods used to produce and disseminate audiovisual content featuring false personation as well as the harms that result. The article and the findings therein answer questions surrounding the broad issues of politics of evidence and harm related to audiovisual manipulation, harassment, privacy, and silencing to offer suggestions towards reconfiguring the public’s agency over technical systems and envisioning ways forward that meaningfully promote justice.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 64%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Configuring Fakes: Digitized Bodies, the Politics of Evidence, and Agency

Paris

2021

Social Media + Society

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“…Some worry that the technology opens the door to new kinds of cyber-bullying, sexual harassment and humiliation (Harris, 2019;Öhman, 2019). Others have raised concerns over the ability of synthetic media to ruin people's reputation by planting false beliefs among the public (Diakopoulos & Johnson, 2021, p. 2081 or even within law enforcement (Yadav & Salmani, 2019, p. 4). Relatedly, some stress the political aspects, warning that synthetic audio and video material falsely starring political figures may pollute democratic discourse to the extent that meaningful deliberation becomes impossible, due to the lack of a shared ground truth (Diakopoulos & Johnson, 2021).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Others have raised concerns over the ability of synthetic media to ruin people's reputation by planting false beliefs among the public (Diakopoulos & Johnson, 2021, p. 2081 or even within law enforcement (Yadav & Salmani, 2019, p. 4). Relatedly, some stress the political aspects, warning that synthetic audio and video material falsely starring political figures may pollute democratic discourse to the extent that meaningful deliberation becomes impossible, due to the lack of a shared ground truth (Diakopoulos & Johnson, 2021). Some even go as far as to predict an "information apocalypse" (Warzel, 2018) or "epistemic maelstrom" (Rini, 2020, p. 8), where the (mediated) truth becomes impossible to discern through the constant noise of synthetic content.…”

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confidence: 99%

The identification game: deepfakes and the epistemic limits of identity

Öhman

2022

Synthese

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The fast development of synthetic media, commonly known as deepfakes, has cast new light on an old problem, namely—to what extent do people have a moral claim to their likeness, including personally distinguishing features such as their voice or face? That people have at least some such claim seems uncontroversial. In fact, several jurisdictions already combat deepfakes by appealing to a “right to identity.” Yet, an individual’s disapproval of appearing in a piece of synthetic media is sensible only insofar as the replication is successful. There has to be some form of (qualitative) identity between the content and the natural person. The question, therefore, is how this identity can be established. How can we know whether the face or voice featured in a piece of synthetic content belongs to a person who makes claim to it? On a trivial level, this may seem an easy task—the person in the video is A insofar as he or she is recognised as being A. Providing more rigorous criteria, however, poses a serious challenge. In this paper, I draw on Turing’s imitation game, and Floridi’s method of levels of abstraction, to propose a heuristic to this end. I call it the identification game. Using this heuristic, I show that identity cannot be established independently of the purpose of the inquiry. More specifically, I argue that whether a person has a moral claim to content that allegedly uses their identity depends on the type of harm under consideration.

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“…At the same time, it could be argued that the act of circulating a photographic or video replication of an individual's face on someone else's body, even playfully, if done without the individual's permission, is never 100% ethically benign. Diakopoulos and Johnson (2020) call such replication "persona plagiarism," but I prefer the term "persona appropriation" as it allows for different kinds of creative intent and viewer readings beyond that of deception. Nonetheless, as a few commenters on the CDFK video point out, even if Keanu does not lose anything from the video, Corridor Digital (the company behind the channel) is leveraging the promotional power of the star's name and face for their own economic benefit, and their gain is skating a little too close to the unethical line.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Deepfaking Keanu: YouTube deepfakes, platform visual effects, and the complexity of reception

Bode

2021

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Med

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On July 14, 2019, a 3-minute 36-second video titled “Keanu Reeves Stops A ROBBERY!” was released on YouTube visual effects (VFX) channel, Corridor. The video’s click-bait title ensured it was quickly shared by users across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Comments on the video suggest that the vast majority of viewers categorised it as fiction. What seemed less universally recognised, though, was that the performer in the clip was not Keanu Reeves himself. It was voice actor and stuntman Reuben Langdon, and his face was digitally replaced with that of Reeves, through the use of an AI generated deepfake, an open access application, Faceswap, and compositing in Adobe After Effects. This article uses Corridor’s deepfake Keanu video (hereafter shorted to CDFK) as a case study which allows the fleshing out of an, as yet, under-researched area of deepfakes: the role of framing contexts in shaping how viewers evaluate, categorise, make sense of and discuss these images. This research draws on visual effects scholarship, celebrity studies, cognitive film studies, social media theory, digital rhetoric, and discourse analysis. It is intended to serve as a starting point of a larger study that will eventually map types of online manipulated media creation on a continuum from the professional to the vernacular, across different platforms, and attending to their aesthetic, ethical, cultural and reception dimensions. The focus on context (platform, creator channel, and comments) also reveals the emergence of an industrial and aesthetic category of visual effects, which I call here “platform VFX,” a key term that provides us with more nuanced frames for illuminating and analysing a range of manipulated media practices as VFX software becomes ever more accessible and lends itself to more vernacular uses, such as we see with various face swap apps

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Anticipating and addressing the ethical implications of deepfakes in the context of elections

Cited by 84 publications

References 33 publications

Configuring Fakes: Digitized Bodies, the Politics of Evidence, and Agency

Configuring Fakes: Digitized Bodies, the Politics of Evidence, and Agency

The identification game: deepfakes and the epistemic limits of identity

Deepfaking Keanu: YouTube deepfakes, platform visual effects, and the complexity of reception

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