(Image: Getty) Has that political video on your social feed been manipulated by AI? A new tool from Microsoft wants to help you distinguish between real and fake videos making the rounds online.
Most deepfake videos have a crude quality that makes them easy to identify, but the technology has become more sophisticated in recent years.
And while some clips are edited for comedic effect, others are used to spread disinformation, a troubling trend in an election year when conspiracy theories are running rampant on social media.
Microsoft's video-authenticator tool evaluates the credibility of what you’re watching in real time and spits out a confidence score to indicate whether a piece of media has been altered.
For now it's only open to political organizations, including publications and campaigns, through the AI Foundation’s Reality Defender 2020 (RD2020), “which will guide organizations through the limitations and ethical considerations inherent in any deepfake detection technology.”
Media companies such as the BBC and The New York Times have partnered with Microsoft to test the authenticator, along with the Trusted News Initiative, a group of publishers and social media companies.
Everyone else, however, can check out this interactive quiz, called Spot the Deepfake, which Microsoft created with the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, Sensity, and USA Today.
“Practical media knowledge can enable us all to think critically about the context of media and become more engaged citizens while still appreciating satire and parody,” Tom Burt, Microsoft's Corporate VP of Customer Security & Trust, and Eric Horvitz, Chief Scientific Officer, wrote in a blog post.
“Though not all synthetic media is bad, even a short intervention with media literacy resources has been shown to help people identify it and treat it more cautiously.”
(Image: Getty) Has that political video on your social feed been manipulated by AI? A new tool from Microsoft wants to help you distinguish between real and fake videos making the rounds online.
Most deepfake videos have a crude quality that makes them easy to identify, but the technology has become more sophisticated in recent years.
And while some clips are edited for comedic effect, others are used to spread disinformation, a troubling trend in an election year when conspiracy theories are running rampant on social media.
Microsoft's video-authenticator tool evaluates the credibility of what you’re watching in real time and spits out a confidence score to indicate whether a piece of media has been altered.
For now it's only open to political organizations, including publications and campaigns, through the AI Foundation’s Reality Defender 2020 (RD2020), “which will guide organizations through the limitations and ethical considerations inherent in any deepfake detection technology.”
Media companies such as the BBC and The New York Times have partnered with Microsoft to test the authenticator, along with the Trusted News Initiative, a group of publishers and social media companies.
Everyone else, however, can check out this interactive quiz, called Spot the Deepfake, which Microsoft created with the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, Sensity, and USA Today.
“Practical media knowledge can enable us all to think critically about the context of media and become more engaged citizens while still appreciating satire and parody,” Tom Burt, Microsoft's Corporate VP of Customer Security & Trust, and Eric Horvitz, Chief Scientific Officer, wrote in a blog post.
“Though not all synthetic media is bad, even a short intervention with media literacy resources has been shown to help people identify it and treat it more cautiously.”
