Get Out director Jordan Peele and Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti got together to make ObamaPeele — a faked video of Obama, using Peele’s voice.
It’s a PSA aimed at getting people to be more wary of possibly-faked videos online. They created this one using FakeApp, a relatively easy-to-use iteration of “DeepFakes” technology that lets you swap faces in videos (previously here, here and here). Thus far, it’s most infamously been used to put the faces of famous actors into porn videos, but it’s painfully easy to see how this will get used in producing political disinfo in the months and years to come, too.
So, in addition to shooting the video, Buzzfeed composed a five-step guide offering pointers on how to spot a deepfaked video. It’s a great list, including suggestions like these:
3. Check where else it is (and isn’t) online
Do an online search with the video’s title or other relevant keywords to see if multiple credible news outlets and the person or entity in question have weighed in on it. Again, no need to rush to a conclusion until you can consult multiple courses.4. Inspect the mouth
Farid said that today’s deepfake videos often have telltale signs. One thing to look closely at is the mouth of the person speaking, because these tools often struggle “to accurately render the teeth, tongue, and mouth interior. So, keep a watchful eye on the mouth for [visual anomalies].”5. Slow it down
Farid also encourages people to slow down and freeze parts of the video to watch it more closely. “Slowing a video down so that you can clearly see the frame-to-frame transition can sometimes reveal temporal glitches that are introduced in manipulated video,” he said.