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The art of deception is as old as time itself and covers everything from counterintelligence

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to Halloween masks. But one incredibly convincing method of subterfuge that's rapidly becoming

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more common is the deep fake. The idea behind a deep fake is that it creates images that strongly

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resemble a certain subject, usually a person, that isn't actually them. But I'm not talking about

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some kind of cheap obvious Photoshop job that involves cut pasting your head onto a wait-lifter

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friend's vacation photos. Instead, deep fakes can be nearly indistinguishable from the real thing

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to the average human eye thanks to the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

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So here's how it works. Programs that generate deep fakes use not one but two different AIs

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working together. The first AI will scan many images of the subject to be faked and then create

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new, faked images. The second AI will then examine these fakes and compare them to real images,

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and if the differences are too stark, the second AI will mark the image as an obvious fake and

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tell the first AI. So the first AI takes this information and continually adjusts the fake

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images until the second AI's error rate hits a certain target. That is to say, until the second

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AI can't tell a fake from the real thing anymore. This system is called a generative adversarial

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network and although the idea behind it is fairly simple, advances in processing power have made

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it a very powerful tool for producing convincing looking fakes. And because it's a fairly general

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purpose technology, it has lots of cool applications. For example, an AI network like this can analyze

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lots of people with a similar look to create a fake model for advertising purposes. It's much

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cheaper than hiring a real model and paying them for a photo shoot, much of course to the chagrin of

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attractive yet unemployed people everywhere. Deep fakes could also help with age progression photos

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used by the police to help find missing people or even to upscale old school video games more

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realistically so they look nice on modern displays. But if you've seen stories about deep fakes in the

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news, you probably know that there's a much darker side to the technology. Unsurprisingly,

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the majority of the deep fake videos on the internet right now are pornographic in nature,

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with the idea often being to swap in a celebrity's face without their consent,

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resulting in several well-known actresses falling victim to the practice. And because

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deep fake technology has gotten good enough to create fake videos that make it appear as though

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people have been caught on camera saying things they haven't, seriously it can accurately match

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up lip movements to convincingly fake speech, there's a huge concern that it could be used

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to spread fake videos of politicians saying insightful or inflammatory things in order to

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push a certain agenda. Of course, this doesn't mean that everyone out there will be fooled,

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but with how realistic deep fakes can be and how polarized the political climate is in many parts

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of the world, political deep fakes could easily convince enough people. Recently, a video surfaced

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of Nancy Pelosi giving a speech while slurring her words apparently drunk. The video wasn't even

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a deep fake, it was merely slowed down, but it still racked up millions of views before finally

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being exposed as fake. And with accusations of political manipulation becoming more common these

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days, the rise of deep fake technology has led some observers to believe that it will have a

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tangible effect on political discourse and even election results. Although it remains to be seen

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if these fears actually come to pass, there are a number of cheaply accessible deep fake tools

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that allow people to create deep fakes without a ton of technical skills. So if you want to tinker

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with them yourself, I'd say just go ahead, but stay away from the politics and stick to swapping

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Linus Faces into your friends wedding video. So thanks for watching guys, like, dislike,

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check out our other videos, leave a comment if you have a suggestion for a future fast as possible,

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and don't forget to subscribe and follow. And that's not me being

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fakely manipulated to say that. I really think you should subscribe.