Review: A year of deepfake launches

Facebook put out an announcement earlier this week outlining its plan for addressing deepfakes on its platform. The TLDR; intentionally misleading deepfakes are banned, as is content that uses AI to merge, superimpose or replace content onto a video. 👀

Facebook’s new rule is not all-encompassing by any means — it does not extend to parody or satire, or “video that has been edited solely to omit or change the order of words.”

It’s the latest step by a big tech company to combat the spread of misinformation by deepfakes before it gets out of hand. The announcement also follows a tweet from Twitter’s Safety team in October that asked the public to weigh in on its new policy to address deepfakes.

All of this comes at a time where synthetic media is growing steadily, as is anxiety over the potentially harmful fall-out from deepfakes (i.e. in political elections) on social media. Within the past week, it was reported that TikTok’s parent company quietly built a deepfake maker. Snap also seems to be investing in the technology with its recent acquisition of AI Factory (a startup that created animated selfies that map onto videos), which we wrote about earlier this week.

Over the past year, we’ve seen over 10 product launches of the “this X does not exist” variety, meaning AI-generated faces, resumes, cats, personalities, startups, snacks (lol), Airbnbs, memes, and feet. There was also a few products that let you deepfake yourself into pop culture scenes, including the Star Wars galaxy or the Marvel universe.

This X Does Not Exist