USA TODAY International Edition
Candidates could require protection from deepfakes
Misinformation game raises stakes in 2020
A video of President Donald Trump singing “America the Beautiful” received more than 50,000 views on Instagram when it was posted just before the July 4th holiday.
Did the president really record a video of himself singing and post it to social media? No, he didn’t. But with the growing prevalence of altered videos and intentional mischief, the question “Is it real?” is one we will need to ask with more regularity.
Deepfake, or videos altered to make it appear as if someone is saying or doing things they did not do, along with other malicious acts could become problematic leading up to the 2020 U. S. presidential election.
“I think that we’ve seen this content has been used for influencing elections in the last couple of years, and we expect that trend to continue,” said Mike Price, chief technology officer at ZeroFOX, a digital risk and security company.
Deepfakes can be easily created using just a few images in a short amount of time. Price says the deepfake trend has raised questions about how videos can influence an election: What if someone creates a video with a political figure in it? What would happen if it was convincing? What would happen if the video was released on the eve of an election? Could it sway the results?
“Beyond directly attacking voter registration, voting machines, and vote counting infrastructure, those with malicious intent have a myriad of new pathways to cause harm to elections, candidates and democracies,” said Dr. Aviel Rubin, an expert on election security.
To that end, using artificial intelligence, ZeroFOX is offering Election Protection to protect political figures, campaign websites, social media accounts and any other digital presence from deepfake videos, phishing attacks and impersonations to deter the spread of misinformation. It detects attacks and
“I think that we’ve seen this content has been used for influencing elections in the last couple of years, and we expect that trend to continue.” Mike Price, chief technology officer at ZeroFOX
removes harmful content.
We’ve already seen some of this happening, with bots and foreign interference. Now- removed Facebook and Twitter accounts with Iranian origins impersonated political figures during the 2018 U. S. Congressional and 2019 European Union parliamentary elections, the company wrote in a blog post.
“Governments may have difficulty fighting against disinformation, especially with the involvement of local actors, which can present legal restrictions and accusations of free speech suppression,” the company wrote. “This means private organizations, research organizations, and social networks need to be involved and coordinated to assist in ensuring voters have the correct and necessary details to make informed decisions.”