Deepfake videos pose a threat, but ‘dumbfakes’ may be worse
By Beatrice Dupuy and Barbara Ortutay, Associated Press
Sophisticated phony videos called deepfakes have attracted plenty of attention as a possible threat to election integrity. But a bigger problem for the 2020 U.S. presidential contest may be “dumbfakes” — simpler and more easily unmasked bogus videos that are easy and often cheap to produce.
The fact that these videos are made so easily and then widely shared across social media platforms does not bode well for 2020, said Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at the University of California, Berkeley.
“The clock is ticking,” Farid said. “The Nancy Pelosi video was a canary in a coal mine...”
Hany Farid is a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information and EECS.
