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'Deepfake Challenge' Aims to Detect Phony Video, Other Media

Agence France-Presse

   WASHINGTON - Technology firms and academics have joined together to
   launch a "deepfake challenge" to improve tools to detect videos and
   other media manipulated by artificial intelligence.

   The initiative announced Thursday includes $10 million from Facebook
   and aims to curb what is seen as a major threat to the integrity of
   online information.

   The effort is being supported by Microsoft and the industry-backed
   Partnership on AI and includes academics from the Massachusetts
   Institute of Technology, Cornell University, University of Oxford,
   University of California-Berkeley, University of Maryland and
   University at Albany.

   Tool to detect altered video

   It represents a broad effort to combat the dissemination of manipulated
   video or audio as part of a misinformation campaign.

   "The goal of the challenge is to produce technology that everyone can
   use to better detect when AI has been used to alter a video in order to
   mislead the viewer," said Facebook chief technical officer Mike
   Schroepfer.

   Schroepfer said deepfake techniques, which present realistic
   AI-generated videos of people doing and saying fictional things, "have
   significant implications for determining the legitimacy of information
   presented online. Yet the industry doesn't have a great data set or
   benchmark for detecting them."

   The challenge is the first project of a committee on AI and media
   integrity created by the Partnership on AI, a group whose mission is to
   promote beneficial uses of artificial intelligence and is backed by
   Apple, Amazon, IBM and other tech firms and non-governmental
   organizations.

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