The Bad and the Ugly: Bots, Influence Campaigns and Deep Fakes

Social Media started with a good intent of increased collaboration and sharing (and perhaps targeted advertising). Over the past decade the increased use of social media and its role in shaping opinions have attracted numerous actors to create influence campaigns over such platforms in particular to achieve political objectives. While influence campaigns have received some attention and platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are proactively trying to counter threat actors, the new frontier is deep fakes. Using AI technology, it is relatively easy to create videos of a person where it appears they are saying or doing something they never said or did. Creating deep fakes of voice is easier and has given rise to a widespread practice of “vishing”. We will discuss what are the potential implications and possible countermeasures.

Takeaways will include:
Discover how easy it is to control the narrative by making a hashtag trending on Twitter in a nation of over 1 Billion

Learn how any podcast, clubhouse talk, or interview of you that is published can be used as a blueprint to create audio of you saying anything

Learn how easily deep fake videos can be produced, what are their current weaknesses, and what are potential future applications