New Delhi/Kiev, (Asian independent) The sudden surge in ‘Deepfake’ videos amid Russia-Ukraine war has put US authorities on alert that are being used to push anti-Ukraine misinformation.
According to a report in The Guardian, a Russian propaganda campaign called ‘Ukraine Today’ has been using fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to promote fake news around the war.
US intelligence officials were on the watch for manipulated video and audio that could result in multiple cases of misinformation.
The FBI continues to wage a campaign against illegal deepfakes, as the technology continues to improve, reports Fox News.
“Audio, video, text and images that are created to show something that didn’t necessarily happen, or never occurred,” FBI Cyber Division Unit Chief Pranav Shah was quoted as saying in the report.
The report also said that Facebook and Twitter have removed several fake profiles pretending to be pro-Russia Ukrainians over the weekend.
Influence operations with ties to Russia and Belarus have been found using Deepfakes to push anti-Ukraine disinformation.
‘Deepfakes’ are video forgeries that make people appear to be saying things they never did, like the popular forged videos of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and that of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that went viral.
‘Deepfakes’ have become so believable in recent years that it can be difficult to tell them apart from real images.
Facebook and Twitter removed two anti-Ukraine “covert influence operations” over the weekend. One had ties to Russia, while the other was connected to Belarus.
Last week, AI News reported, citing a study, that humans can generally no longer distinguish between real and AI-generated “deepfake” faces.
