What Are “Deepfakes” and How Can Christians Respond?
Often as convincing as they are counterfeit, “deepfake” videos seemingly show people speaking or behaving in ways they never did. Let’s see what the rise of deepfakes entails and how Christians can respond.
It was a strange ending to a strange year.
Almost every other Christmas I could remember, my family—being Canadian—would tune in to hear Queen Elizabeth II deliver her annual speech. But December 2020 unfolded a little differently. We could choose from not one but two different speeches delivered by two different versions of the Queen.
One spoke of the birth of Christ.
The other performed a TikTok-style dance routine.
Both looked and sounded identical.
What bizarre twist of technology had invaded planet earth—this shapeshifting avatar able even to mimic a monarch for better or worse?
The answer: so-called “deepfake” media.
Because deepfakes are only bound to grow more common, let’s take a look at what they are, why they’re significant, and how Christians can respond.
What Are Deepfakes?
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines deepfake as “an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.”1 In other words, deepfake technology works like a sophisticated means of photoshopping media—and especially videos—to craft ridiculously realistic renditions of events which never happened.
Creating deepfakes usually involves swapping one person’s face (or facial features) for another’s—like transferring the Queen’s visage onto the figure of a dancing actor. (For an overview of how this technology works—and even trains itself to become a better liar, check out the textbox at the end of this post.) Notably, these types of deepfakes represent just one of many synthetic media techniques available today.2
For instance, artificial intelligence can also let users create and control their own video simulations of an individual’s lips, face, or body. These techniques allow users to literally put words into someone else’s mouth—especially because realistic voice simulations can make a person seemingly say whatever the media producer wants them to say. Similarly, altering a real voice with a new “voice skin” can make a person sound like someone else. Changing a video’s background can make the entire scene look as though it were filmed in a different environment. Copying other people and objects into the video can reshape the story even further. Synthetic media techniques can even create totally fabricated—but incredibly realistic—images of people, animals, and objects that don’t exist.3
Today’s technology clearly leaves humans with endless tools for truth-twisting.
Why Should Christians Care?
Today’s technology clearly leaves humans with endless tools for truth-twisting. That’s not to say the technology itself is a problem. Like most tools in our fallen world, these techniques have applications for helping as well as for harming.
For example, potentially helpful deepfake applications include overcoming language barriers in real-time video calls by translating speakers’ words while re-dubbing their lip movements to match the sounds of the other language.4 Deepfake technologies also have various medical applications, such as allowing people with lost vocal abilities to communicate using synthetic reproductions of their own voices.5
On the other hand, deepfakes have already been used to misrepresent officials, commit fraud, and fabricate scandals.6,7 Sadly, analyses8 reveal that deepfake technology so far is overwhelmingly being—as one law professor worded it—“weaponised against women.”9 These realities illustrate how, in the hands of fallen humans, technology can be a devastating superpower.
To some extent, that’s nothing new. Even with the most basic technology of hammers and nails, humans have both built hospitals and performed crucifixions. The difference lies in whether we’re applying technology in ways that align with God’s words—like, love your neighbour as yourself.
Unfortunately, we don’t need to look far to see how culture has freefallen from the foundation of God’s Word. In rejecting our Creator, we’ve departed from our basis for absolute truth and objective morality. We’re consequently watching morality decreasing even as technology is increasing. It doesn’t take a supercomputer to figure out that’s a dangerous combination. Add deepfake technology to the equation, and we’ve got a culture with sophisticated tools for telling lies—and no foundation for understanding truth.
How Can Christians Respond?
As Christians, we’re called to be people of truth, to exercise discernment, and to walk wisely in our culture. (See this blog post for more biblical reminders on living for truth in a world of lies.) We don’t want to be duped by deceptions—or to accidentally spread them. Instead, if we see a lie, we want to be able to recognize it and respond with truth. Similarly, if we see technology being leveraged for evil, we want to be ready to follow Ephesians 5:11 (ESV): “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.”
What does all this mean for Christians living in an age of deepfakes? First, we can’t be gullible. We must be aware that now more than ever, photos and videos are not always what they seem. However, a flipside of this reality is that with the rise of deepfakes, people can more easily miss (or conceal) the truth by dismissing genuine photos and videos as fabricated. So, we can neither automatically accept nor reject everything we see in the media. Everything, instead, calls for biblical critical thinking.
Recognizing Deepfakes
On that note, can any tell-tale clues help us discern between genuine footage and deepfakes? Unfortunately, well-crafted deepfakes can be incredibly hard to detect. Researchers are working to create artificial intelligence algorithms able to recognize deepfakes.10 However, as these tools emerge, new deepfake technologies find ways around them. For instance, after one researcher discovered that people in deepfake videos blink at a different rate than real humans, new deepfakes came out with blinking rates corrected.11
So, there’s not necessarily a “silver bullet” for detecting high-quality deepfakes. That’s even more reason to apply the biblical critical thinking tools we do have. For instance, if someone in a video is sharing a message that contradicts Scripture, we know the message must be false whether the person is a deepfake or not.12 We can also check the message’s source by investigating where the video came from and by considering whether the person(s) in the video would really be likely to speak or behave in the way the video suggests.
On the bright side, low-quality deepfakes can be easier to spot. Giveaways may include distorted hairlines, underdefined teeth, unusually smooth skin, and video glitches when the person turns to face sideways.13 You can also apply standard fact-checking techniques for verifying videos, as described in this article. For instance, analyzing videos frame-by-frame can let you spot inconsistencies you might not notice in real time. And running reverse image searches of stills from the footage can let you find any original videos incorporated into the deepfake if they appeared earlier online. These techniques can also help you recognize “shallowfakes”—genuine videos which have been taken out of context, mislabeled, or edited in misleading ways.
Living Out Deep Truths
To recap, deepfakes are fabricated videos which seemingly depict someone doing or saying something they never did—like capping a Christmas speech with a dance routine. While this technology can be applied for some noble purposes, it also opens chilling new avenues for lying, stealing, and scandalizing. This is especially bad news for cultures which have rejected their Creator—and therefore, their foundation for absolute truth morality.
The good news is that God’s Word provides an unshakable foundation for knowing, defending, and living out truth, even in a deepfake world.
The good news is that God’s Word provides an unshakable foundation for knowing, defending, and living out truth, even in a deepfake world. A biblical worldview provides a solid starting point for thinking critically about today’s media messages, whether real or fabricated. Ultimately, in this era of deepening lies, we have even more reason to hold fast to the still deeper truth: God’s Word, the firmest foundation for thinking critically about our culture’s dance of deception.
How Deepfakes Work:
The word “deep” in “deepfake” comes from the term deep learning—a type of artificial intelligence where machines “learn” in ways that simulate the human brain. When we learn something, neurons in our brains forge new connections. The more we use those neural pathways, the more efficient they become. That’s how practice helps us master new skills, whether learning a language or playing a sport.
Deep learning works in a similar way. An artificial “neural network” can process huge amounts of information, sharpening its understanding as it goes without needing humans to constantly “teach” it.
One of these deep learning networks, the “brains” behind many deepfakes, is called an autoencoder. An autoencoder uses two features—an encoder and a pair of decoders—to transpose a new face (person A) onto a target image (person B). The encoder studies the similarities between persons A and B and strips both pictures down to compressed images which include these similarities. Meanwhile, the decoders are “trained” to reconstruct the unique features of faces A and B from compressed images. By feeding the compressed image of person B into the decoder “trained” to reconstruct person A, you end up with an image showing the face of person A imposed on an image of person B.14 Repeat this process for every frame of a video, and you’ve generated a face-swapped deepfake.
Deepfakes grow even sneakier when they’re made using algorithms called GANs—generative adversarial networks. GANs contain two deep-learning networks: a generator that acts as a decoder to construct fake images and a discriminator, which tries to recognize these fake images by comparing them against real ones. That way, the discriminator picks up on the generator’s mistakes. The discriminator then feeds this information back to the generator, which in turn improves its methods to produce more realistic images. In other words, the technology constantly teaches itself to become a better liar.
Footnotes
- “Deepfake,” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, accessed August 10, 2021, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deepfake.
- Sam Gregory, “How to Think About Deepfakes and Emerging Manipulation Technologies,” in Verification Handbook for Disinformation and Media Manipulation, ed. Craig Silverman (European Journalism Centre), 88–93, accessed August 11, 2021, https://datajournalism.com/read/handbook/verification-3.
- For examples, see Luisa Verdoliva, Luisa, “Media Forensics and Deepfakes: An Overview,” IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing 14, no. 5 (2020): 910–932.
- Mika Westerlund, “The Emergence of Deepfake Technology: A Review,” Technology Innovation Management Review 9, no. 11 (2019).
- Adrienne de Ruiter, “The Distinct Wrong of Deepfakes,” Philosophy & Technology (2021): 1–22.
- Kim Hartmann and Keir Giles, “The Next Generation of Cyber-Enabled Information Warfare,” In 2020 12th International Conference on Cyber Conflict (CyCon) 1300 (2020): 233–250, IEEE.
- Westerlund, “The Emergence of Deepfake Technology.”
- Exact statistics and research cited in Ashish Jaiman, "Debating the Ethics of Deepfakes," in Tackling Insurgent Ideologies in a Pandemic World, ed. Maya Mirchandani (New Delhi: ORF and Global Policy Journal, 2020), 76.
- Citron (Boston University), quoted in Ian Sample, “What Are Deepfakes – And How Can You Spot Them?” The Guardian, January 13, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/13/what-are-deepfakes-and-how-can-you-spot-them.
- Verdoliva, “Media Forensics and Deepfakes.”
- Gregory, “How to Think About Deepfakes,” 88.
- Is it circular reasoning for Christians to compare messages against Scripture? No. To find out why not, see Critical Thinking Scan Season 2, Episodes 9–10 on Answers TV.
- Sam Gregory, “How to Think About Deepfakes,” 91.
- Jan Kietzmann et al., "Deepfakes: Trick or Treat?" Business Horizons 63, no. 2 (2020): 135–146.
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