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One of the main threats on the Internet is the danger of being deceived. Attackers take advantage of this and create content that misleads users. One of the tools is deepfake - an image synthesis technology based on artificial intelligence (AI). However, the main problem is not the emergence of such tools, but the scale of their distribution and the lowering of the entry threshold, says Timofey Vi, Head of the Strategic Development Department of ANO Dialogue.

Speaking at the Russian Internet Governance Forum (RIGF-2023) session "How deep is your fake: technology of deception on the Internet", he noted that five years ago, creating a deepfake content writing service required very serious knowledge and skills. Now anyone can create it by pressing a few buttons in an application. According to the expert,

The ease of use of online deception technologies is one of the most important threats on the Internet

Professor of the Department of Theory and History of International Relations at St. Petersburg State University Konstantin Pantzerev pointed out that it is extremely difficult and time-consuming to create a truly high-quality deepfake at home. According to him, this requires powerful and expensive equipment and software. At the same time, generating a fake video of average quality is really very simple, the expert emphasized.



Yuri Lindre, an analyst at the Center for Global IT Cooperation, speaking at the forum, said that by the end of 2020, the total number of deepfakes distributed on the Internet had reached 1 million units. According to him,

The number of deepfakes doubles every six months

The popularity of this technology is growing along with the increasing demand for AI. Thus, according to Agenda Media Group Development Director Alexey Parfun, the volume of the global neural network market in 2022 reached $450 billion.

Alexey Parfun believes that the use of deepfake and speech synthesis technologies does not pose any threats. It is worth noting that Agenda Media Group is the creator of the web series "PMJayson", filmed using deepfake technology. The comedy project uses the images of famous actors - Jason Statham, Margot Robbie, Keanu Reeves and Robert Pattinson.

According to Alexey Parfun, the use of this development allows reducing the costs of attracting actors by 30-90%. The expert noted that the development of the technology provides a lot of new opportunities, for example, it is possible to "resurrect" a celebrity. So, for example, a deepfake in the form of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin could give lectures to students and schoolchildren about cosmonautics, and actor Sergei Bodrov will again be able to "star" in films.

Timofey Vi believes that the "return of the departed" is an ethical problem. According to him, such actions will slow down the further development of various industries, since, for example, the "revived" Sergei Bodrov will not give new actors the opportunity to prove themselves. According to the expert,

there is currently no solution to the ethical problem using neural networks

Alexey Parfun objected to him, noting that the Association of Communication Agencies of Russia (ACAR) is already forming an ethical charter for monitoring products created by artificial intelligence (AI). The expert is confident that in the next three to five years, the creation of deepfakes will reach the level of ChatGPT, when the user will only need to create a text description of the task, and the neural network will generate the necessary video.