(As our sister site Gizmodo reports, the technology has been especially popular formaking fake celebrity porn.)
Deepfakes will soon make it hard to tell when a video of a famous figure is real.
Here are three things to ask yourself:
Is their mouth moving too little?
Fake Obama has trouble with his P sounds, especially on complete dipshit.
Does their voice sound off?
In BuzzFeeds video, Peele provides the audio with a convincing, but slightly imperfect, vocal impression.
Do they move herky-jerky?
Is their face moving independently of their body?
Is their mouth moving independently of their face?
Notice how Obamas eyes dart around, and how his mouth seems a bit detached from his face.
Contrast with how Peeles mouth and eyes both move in tandem with his facial muscles.
Do they look like a video game?
So in different spots, Fake Obama looks oddly sharp or blurry or lit from odd angles.
Plus the outline of his jaw tends to flicker.
Thats not a foolproof test of a video, but its a warning sign.
How do they look in a real video?
Watch a bit of this fireside Hangout from the real Obama.
BuzzFeed used a very similar video of Obama to build their fake one.
Note the real Obamas facial tics and body movements.
Listen to his voice, a little deeper and flatter than Peeles impression.
See how his face matches the rest of the picture.
And note how precisely the human mouth moves to form sounds.
Also note the high resolution in the real video.
The higher the resolution and quality of a video, the harder it is to fake it.
Again, and we cant stress this enough, the gap will eventually close as technology gets more sophisticated.
So the simpler and lower-quality the video, the higher the chance someone could convincingly fake it.
Be on your guard.
