An AI media company created a deepfake of actor Keanu Reeves dancing in a kitchen to draw attention to its services. (Source: YouTube channel Unreal Keanu Reeves)

Spreading Deepfakes Evolves as Companies Find New Ways to Grab Attention with Viral Celebrity Videos

An article from spectrum.ieee.org discusses deepfakes and their pros and cons, touching on how a lack of government oversight of AI has led to a burgeoning industry of generating deepfake videos and images across the internet.

Viral videos, such as those from Unreal Keanu Reeves, a popular YouTube Shorts creator, have racked up tens of millions of views in just a few months. A similar TikTok account, deeptomcruise (which is produced by an AI company called Metaphysic.ai), has over five million followers. It’s a clever trick—but how do fake videos of Keanu Reeves dancing in his kitchen translate to startups raising millions?

“Let’s face it, getting people’s attention is key for anyone in the business, media, or even government, and deepfakes can certainly help with that,” says Dmitry Shironosov, CEO of Everypixel Labs.

Deepfakes have existed for several years, creating the potential for mass misinformation. The viral nature of the earliest deepfake clips, which used political figures like Barack Obama and Donald Trump as examples, seemed to highlight these concerns. Yet these worries haven’t proven a hurdle for startups in the space, and the companies that are in some way using technology that might be called a “deepfake” are too numerous to count.

Aside from China, which recently introduced rules requiring deepfakes to be watermarked, the world’s governments haven’t taken regulatory action.

The article explores some of the start-ups that are hoping to create an industry. But will the public be on board with more deepfake confusion in a world that is already beginning to be wary of an AI-driven society?

The future of deepfakes is still being written. Still, it seems to include a wide range of video manipulation tools that let editors improve, customize, and personalize every aspect of a video. And isn’t that, at some point, just video editing?

Some people would say no it isn’t.

read more at spectrum.ieee.org