Facebook pledges crackdown on deepfakes ahead of the US presidential election

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Facebook has pledged to crack down on misleading deepfakes ahead of the US presidential election later this year.

Voter manipulation is a concern for any functioning democracy and deepfakes provide a whole new challenge for social media platforms.

A fake video of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, went viral last year after purportedly showing her slurring her words as if she was intoxicated. The clip shows how even a relatively...

8 January 2020 | Deepfakes

Deepfake has Johnson and Corbyn advocating each other for Britain’s next PM

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A think tank has released two deepfake videos which appear to show election rivals Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn advocating each other for Britain’s top role.

The clips are produced by Future Advocacy and intend to show that people can no longer necessarily trust what they see in videos, not just to question what they read and hear.

Here’s the Johnson video:

Boris Johnson has a message for you.#GE2019...

12 November 2019 | Deepfakes

Mozilla shares YouTube horror tales in campaign for responsible algorithms

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Mozilla has launched a campaign for more responsible algorithms by sharing YouTube horror tales crowdsourced from social media.

We've all scratched our heads at some recommendations when using online platforms. Just yesterday, Verge reporter Megan Farokhmanesh shared how her Instagram recommendations have been plagued by some rather bizarre CGI images of teeth.

Farokhmanesh's account is of a recommendation algorithm going rogue in a relatively harmless and amusing way,...

15 October 2019 | Ethics

Pinterest uses AI to reduce self-harm content by 88% over the past year

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Pinterest announced on World Mental Health Day that it’s reduced self-harm content by 88 percent over the past year using AI.

In a blog post titled Getting better at helping people feel better, the social media platform says it’s using machine learning techniques to identify content which displays, encourages, or rationalises self-harm.

Anxiety and depression are at all-time highs while many countries are failing to properly fund mental health services. In the UK,...

11 October 2019 | Healthcare

California introduces legislation to stop political and porn deepfakes

Deepfake videos have the potential to do unprecedented amounts of harm so California has introduced two bills designed to limit them.

For those unaware, deepfakes use machine learning technology in order to make a person appear like they’re convincingly doing or saying things which they’re not.

There are two main concerns about deepfake videos:

Personal defamation – An individual is made to appear in a sexual and/or humiliating scene either for blackmail...

7 October 2019 | Deepfakes

Ofcom: AI is not ready to effectively moderate online content ‘for the foreseeable future’

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Ofcom and Cambridge Consultants have teamed up on a report examining the effectiveness of AI-powered online content moderation.

Governments around the world have put increasing amounts of pressure on social networks and communication services to take responsibility for content posted on them. Society itself is becoming more aware of the dangers following live-streamed terror attacks, cyberbullying, political manipulation, and more.

With some platforms having billions...

22 July 2019 | Social Media

Instagram uses ‘AI intervention’ to help counter bullying

Media sharing platform Instagram is launching an ‘AI intervention’ system designed to help counter the scourge of cyberbullying.

With 95 million photos and videos uploaded to Instagram every day, manual content moderation is impossible. Inappropriate content must be reported for moderation today, and the psychological damage it can do to human moderators is well-documented.

AI has long been herald as a means to automate the moderation process, but today it still...

10 July 2019 | Social Media

Facebook outage gave a glimpse at how its AI analyses images

Facebook’s issue displaying images yesterday gave users an interesting look at how the social media giant’s AI analyses their uploads.

An outage yesterday meant Facebook users were unable to see uploaded images, providing a welcome respite from the usual mix of food and baby photos. In their place, however, was some interesting text.

Text in the placeholder where the image should have been displayed showed how Facebook’s AI automatically tagged the...

4 July 2019 | Facebook

Twitter’s latest acquisition tackles fake news using AI

Twitter has acquired Fabula AI, a UK-based startup employing artificial intelligence for tackling fake news.

Fake news is among the most difficult challenges of our time. Aside from real stories often being called it by certain politicians, actual fake news is used to coerce people into making decisions.

Governments have been putting increasing pressure on sites like Twitter and Facebook to take more responsibility for the content shared on them.

With billions...

4 June 2019 | Social Media