New technology from the University of Maryland has the potential to help people authenticate what's real and what's fake.
True or not, it only takes a few minutes for a video posted online to go viral. And with advancements in technology, including the creation of what are commonly known as “deepfake” videos, opinions, emotions, and even reality can now be shaped so that people are tricked into believing something that is not true. Ta.
For example, in 2022, a deepfake featuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy purportedly showed him telling Ukrainian troops to lay down their arms and surrender to Russian forces.
That was clearly not true. But you can imagine how a manipulated video of a politician saying something outlandish, even if they didn't actually say it, could affect national politics, especially in an election year. right.
But new technology from the University of Maryland has the potential to help people authenticate what's real and what's fake.
Nirupam Roy, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, said: “When you have the power to influence people and social media, it can also be exploited through these types of 'shallowfakes' and 'deepfakes.' There is,” he said.
“These are more harmful than written media because people can hear people's voices and hear and see them talking about something. It has been proven to have a deeper impact on people's ideas and thoughts.”
He is developing a new program called Talk Lock, which he hopes to have available by early summer. It starts by allowing the speaker to display his QR code. When you record a speech with your camera or smartphone, his QR code will appear in the background.
“Video can be recorded by anyone in the audience. No source control is required on the media itself,” Roy explained. “This dynamic allows him to see if small sections of that speech have been altered or altered, omitted or even shuffled as long as the QR code is visible on the video.”
Now, the obvious question is, what if someone just cut the code from the video? If this technology becomes widespread enough, it could itself raise red flags for people.
“Going forward, we hope to see a trend on social media to display this live QR code on the video itself so that social media apps can automatically detect it,” Roy said. .
“If someone tries to tamper with or cut the QR code, the video itself becomes unauthentic and cannot be verified.”
In the early stages of the program, someone held up a QR code to their phone or tablet as they spoke, but Roy is currently working on improving it to be far less intrusive for everyone in attendance. He's also working on a version that would prevent videos posted to his social media feed from being similarly tampered with.
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