Deepfake — Fake News or Powerful Tool? [Event Report]

Oct 25th, 2019 by DFBlue

On Sept. 5, DFBlue hosted an event in New York City called “Deepfake — Fake News or Powerful tool?” which was a discussion on what’s possible with Deepfake technology and how it can be used ethically.

The questions we answered are:

This was the first-ever event focused on deepfakes.

Slides


Speakers

Event speakers. From left to right: Sid Gandhi, Paweł Korus, Rashi Ranka
Event speakers. From left to right: Sid Gandhi, Paweł Korus, Rashi Ranka

Our guest speaker Mr. Paweł Korus Ph.D. (New York University) presented his research on deepfake and digital forgery detection. He is a computer scientist with 10 years of international research experience in computer vision, image processing and security. His research addresses various problems in multimedia forensics and focuses on authentication and protection techniques for digital photographs. This interdisciplinary field combines concepts from computer vision, image processing, image quality assessment, machine learning, statistical analysis, communication, and information theory.

Sid Gandhi describing the deepfake workflow and current deepfake tools.
Sid Gandhi describing the deepfake workflow and current deepfake tools.

Our Co-founder Sid Gandhi showcased the workflow of a deepfake software called FaceSwap along with a live demo. He also highlighted the importance of improving further research to improve existing technologies. Sid Gandhi is also VP of Product Engineering at a Silicon Valley cybersecurity start-up, developing an industry-first cybersecurity solution. Always on the forefront of new technology, Sidhant has worked on early AR/VR collaboration tools and mobile applications. In the past, he was a software engineer and DRI at Apple where he wrote developer-facing APIs in iOS 9 – 11. Sidhant holds a BS in Business with a minor in Computer Science from the University of Southern California.

Rashi Ranka describing ethical uses of deepfakes
Rashi Ranka describing ethical uses of deepfakes

Rashi Ranka (Co-founder, DFBlue) furthered the discussion on the basics of deepfakes, spreading of fake news and the importance of ethical deepfaking. She highlighted the use of deepfakes for advertising and entertainment purposes which have three major advantages:


Attendees

We were extremely glad to have AI professionals, ML engineers, media professors, advertisers, media synthesis investors and research students attending the event.

Attendees networking during the event
Attendees networking during the event

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