Fakes are dark and deep

 

Deep Faking has catapulted the subtle art of faking to new exalted levels from its humble con-acts origins. Faking is as old as mankind, we all have faked or feigned injuries, head aches, stomach aches and generally managed to get away easily. These were childish acts more for fun and to skip an ordeal more often than not. There were some amongst us who were born to con but had landed up in the academies by default. These fake artists could fool almost anyone and everyone with their genuine innocent looks. Women are known to be quite adept in this art themselves, from the jewellery to headaches to the big "O" they can fake anything. They can successfully put on an act anytime, anywhere. The complete film industry is a fake industry, all the actors are faking it to make them look as original as they can convince us into believing. After all, we know there are no super heroes, they fake it and we gullible lot believe it.

Then there are painters, whose classics are faked and even these imitations are almost as good as the original. Many of us settle for Hussains, Rembrandt or Von Gogh  copies as we can't afford the originals. Who hasn't seen soccer players faking injuries to earn a penalty or to ensure that  the referee shows their, not so innocent opponent a red card. Faking, dodging, side stepping are all part of the moves which a pugilist indulges in to keep his opponent guessing. In politics too faking it is part of the curriculum. The politicians have to convince the voters by hook and more often by crook to bite the bullet. A fish gets hooked once it opens its mouth, ironically here it is the politician who keeps his mouth open but it is the voter who gets caught by the bait.

But all this faking is mere child's play in front of the colossus which is staring us in the face today, "deep fake". If faking was human, deep faking is artificial, obviously I mean Intelligence. It is the advent of AI which has given birth to this new monster where it is impossible to distinguish between a ‘real’ and a ‘fake’ and mind you it is not just a still photograph but a walking talking video with exact diction and pauses, fooling even the supposed speaker. A deep fake is the product of a complex set of algorithms, one is a generator and the other a discriminator. As the name suggests generator generates the images, audio, video etc and the discriminator is the critique who studies it from all angles and compares it with the data base to check how close it is to the original. There are a number of iterations cycle and finally the output is as good as an original one, except that it is a fake. Unfortunately this precision does not augur well for the society as has been proven a countless number of times that they can fall prey to any such propaganda. 

We Indians can stake a claim to the greatest acts of these deep fakes, remember, in Mahabharata Shri Krishna faked the sunset to get Jaidrath killed by Arjuna. Imagine if someone like Goebbels had access to these deep-fakes, he would have convinced the allies also into believing in Nazism. A common man, as it is believes everything peddled on whats app university to be gospel, now it will be next to impossible to convince him that this propaganda is malicious.  Election time the deep fake machinery is hard at work, Aamir Khan, Ranveer Singh have already lodged complaints. Photoshopped images were a precursor to this master artwork and it will be quite a task for even the cyber sleuths to crack these cases as they inundate the social media. 

Wonder why was it christened Deep Fake when it could have been Ultra Fake or Big Fake. Pockets used to be deep, now fakes are, may be the legacy of Deep Throat the legendary informant in the infamous Watergate Scandal has something to do with it. After all it disgraced the high and mighty President Richard Nixon forcing him to tender his resignation. Deep Fakes too have the potential to slay many a Goliath. With due apologies to Robert Frost,

The fakes are scary dark and deep

We have our sanity to keep

And way to go for the quantum leap

And way to go for the quantum leap!!!

PS Guess what even I had to resort to a little bit of faking the content regulator, as initially when I posted the blog with the topic "deep fakes" it was listed as with an advisory of suspicion of being of  malicious nature. Then good old NDA technique was utilized, just tinkered with the title and lo and behold, it passed muster.