In New York, an exhibition urges us to be wary of "deepfakes"

DEEPFAKES have been causing great concern for a few years now, especially in terms of misinformation. In New York, the Museum of the Moving Image is dedicating an entire exhibition to this technology, which makes it possible to replace one face by another in any video.

"Every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind." It is with these words that Richard Nixon concluded his speech following the Apollo 11 mission. Except that the American president never actually pronounced it: he had written it in case Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did not return from the Moon.

A six-minute video, co-directed by Francesca Panetta and Halsey Burgund, may however give us the opposite impression. It is part of the exhibition "Deepfake: Unstable Evidence on Screen" at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. Visitors can discover it in an installation reproducing an American living room in the 1970s. The goal? To show how easily images can be manipulated.

At first glance, the video of Richard Nixon is strikingly realistic. We recognize his face, his expressions and his voice. You have to look more closely to realize that his features are a bit too rigid and his speech a bit... robotic. This doctored video is what is called a deepfake. The face of an actor has been replaced by that of the 37th president of the United States.

How can "deepfakes" be detected?

Other videos circulating on the internet have been faked using artificial intelligence for entertainment or disinformation purposes. Some of them related to the Spanish-American War and the assassination of J.F. Kennedy are included in the exhibition "Deepfake: Unstable Evidence on Screen."

While the vast majority of deepfakes in circulation are pornographic, this photomontage technology is worrisome due to its potential to be used to manipulate opinion. "Moving image media is more susceptible than ever to manipulations that make it hard to separate fact from fiction and truth from illusion," outlines the Museum of the Moving Image. "Deepfakes have entered the moving image ecosystem at a particularly vulnerable moment: social media creates the opportunity for any video to be shared widely and immediately, and believed or contested based on entrenched points of view."

Faced with the extent of the phenomenon, several research teams have been working for years on the development of software to detect deepfakes. The giants of Silicon Valley are also looking into the issue. In June 2021, Facebook scientists presented a method that should make it possible to identify deepfakes and determine their origin, thanks to artificial intelligence. Until then, visitors to the Museum of the Moving Image can familiarize themselves with this technology until May 15.