Deepfakes have earned quite the negative reputation over the last few years, especially following an election cycle plagued by misinformation from both sides. But deepfake technology is more than just a weapon in a scammer’s arsenal; it’s a valuable tool, and it’s up to all of us to choose whether we misuse it or wield it for more constructive purposes.
For as long as deepfake technology has been on the general population’s radar, it’s been stirring up controversy. Just the name itself sounds a bit sinister, and inevitably, people have come up with numerous malicious uses for it. The first example of the word “deepfake” can be linked to one of its earliest known amateur applications, when a pornographic post surfaced on Reddit that appeared to depict a celebrity. But it was in fact a fake video created by synthesizing the celebrity’s face on the body of a pornstar.
Deepfakes have earned quite the negative reputation over the last few years, especially following an election cycle plagued by misinformation from both sides. But deepfake technology is more than just a weapon in a scammer’s arsenal; it’s a valuable tool, and it’s up to all of us to choose whether we misuse it or wield it for more constructive purposes.
For as long as deepfake technology has been on the general population’s radar, it’s been stirring up controversy. Just the name itself sounds a bit sinister, and inevitably, people have come up with numerous malicious uses for it. The first example of the word “deepfake” can be linked to one of its earliest known amateur applications, when a pornographic post surfaced on Reddit that appeared to depict a celebrity. But it was in fact a fake video created by synthesizing the celebrity’s face on the body of a pornstar.
With such a dramatic public debut, it’s understandable why many people are suspicious of the implications of a technology that can successfully be used for deception. Moreover, as that technology progresses and becomes more sophisticated, people find more ways to abuse it. Concerns have recently arisen about the potential impact of the ability to create deepfake videos that alter or even completely fabricate a politician’s words, for example. But despite these worst-case scenarios, synthetic video technology was not developed with malicious intent.
Making Constructive Use of Deepfakes
As with just about anything humans create, it is sometimes merely co-opted for harmful applications. Much like Photoshop, deepfake technology can be used to intentionally mislead, but we will continue to uncover more constructive uses for synthetic video and become more adept at distinguishing the fakes from reality as our understanding of the technology increases.
The misuse is troubling, but there are also emerging benefits to embracing the possibilities of synthetic video in nearly every field, possibilities that we have only just begun to explore. It has already proved useful in science and medicine, for example, where it can be applied to provide a synthetic voice for people who are unable to speak on their own, or to allow David Beckham to raise awareness for a campaign against malaria in nine different languages.
Education and business are two more examples of fields that can benefit greatly from deepfake technology. One of the most promising advantages of video synthesis is that it enables the creation of personalized content at scale like never before. This capability would allow educators to create virtual learning materials targeted specifically at each student’s unique needs and style of learning.
Similarly, businesses can use deepfakes to provide employees with customized training videos, or to create virtual sales pitches that are personalized for specific customers. While personalization was certainly possible already, the availability of synthetic video technology will elevate this strategy from an expensive and time consuming process to a truly viable option.
Synthetic Media in Education
In a study conducted in 2018, researchers randomly enrolled individuals from a selection of students in either a face-to-face class or an online version of the same class. Both classes were taught by the same professor and utilized the same course structure, objectives, and exams. Students were also given a pre and post course test to assess their overall improvement in the subject. The study found that the students who attended the face-to-face class scored significantly higher on exams, but the results of the pre and post course tests showed a negligible variation in average improvement between face-to-face students and online students.
There’s been a lot of debate around the pros and cons of online learning, especially after the shift away from face-to-face classes during the COVID-19 outbreak. The mixed results of the research suggest that neither is truly better than the other; each style has its successes and its failures. Using deepfake technology would allow educators to combine the two methods to create a learning environment that takes advantage of the positives of each.
According to the data, students don’t learn less when they attend class online, but they do struggle to score well on exams. This indicates that students may need more personal interaction with the professor than an online class usually allows to be effective test takers. With an API like DeepWord’s, the same video of a professor teaching the course material could be synthesized to create multiple versions that present the material to each student specifically without the need to reshoot the video multiple times.
Normally, recording a unique video for each student would be far too time-consuming to be practical, or even possible. Utilizing deepfake technology would allow the professor to cater to each remote student’s individual needs and provide them with a personalized experience that they would otherwise miss out on in an online setting. Each student has a different style of learning that works best for them, and synthetic video puts the difficult task of catering to each and every one within reach.
Many students opt for online classes because it is more convenient for them. The ability to choose when and where they learn is essential for those with medical conditions that prevent them from attending class in person, or adult students with families who need the flexibility to attend class around their work schedule or childcare duties. Serving these students and their unique needs is an important part of making education equally accessible to everyone. Deepfake technology could bring us one step closer to that goal by allowing educators to easily create personalized online content for each individual student to give them the face-to-face experience they need while also accommodating their circumstances.
There is also the possibility of more creative applications of deepfakes in education. For example, a history teacher could create a synthetic video of Ulysses S. Grant’s head on an actor’s body, convincingly synthesized to look as if he was a living, speaking person, to give students the chance to attend a class about the Civil War taught by the commander of the Union army himself. This technique could be used to make the subjects many students consider to be boring more interesting and accessible.
Synthetic Media for Better Workplace Training
Incorporating deepfake technology into educational content could benefit the business world in a similar way. Almost everyone dreads the new employee training videos; they’re usually boring, sometimes outdated, and few people learn effectively from them. With a synthetic video API, companies could easily create a personalized training video for each employee by changing the words spoken by the video actors to address the employee by name or include information specific to the employee’s position or background. This would be an effective way to make the information more engaging and memorable to employees, and it would require very little work on the employer’s part.
Investing in employee training is also an important part of maintaining an effective team of workers. Employees who receive better training are happier at their jobs and perform better than under-trained employees. Happy, effective employees means less turnover and better business for the employer, which ultimately equates to a lot of money saved by the company. Without the help of deepfake technology, maximizing performance by recording an entirely separate training video for every employee would require far too much time and money to be realistic.
Synthetic Media in Sales and Marketing
Synthetic video also has the potential to improve business’ sales and marketing strategy. Customers respond well to being treated like they matter, and in many cases, the key to earning their business is catering to this need. Deepfake technology can allow businesses to design personalized virtual sales or marketing content for individual customers. Much like students, each customer is different, each with their own unique needs and situations. Different sales strategies can easily be applied to specific cases by synthesizing a sales video to deliver a different personalized message to each customer. The personal touch will have more of an impact on the customer and provide a more engaging and convincing experience.
Without a deepfake solution, filming individual videos for every customer would require a lot of time, effort, and money, but filming one video and synthesizing it to deliver different words makes personalization at scale not only possible, but easy and affordable. An API like Deep Word’s would allow sales staff to automatically generate sales videos for individual leads or customers as they move along a CRM pipeline, fully integrating synthetic video into the sales process and streamlining the whole procedure.
Finding a Solution With Deep Word API
These examples of the constructive possibilities of deepfake technology are within reach thanks to synthetic media services like Deep Word. The tools Deep Word provides make synthetic video creation accessible to everyone and opens the doors to all of the examples here, as well as more that have yet to be realized. The advantages it provides would require too much time and too many resources to be feasible otherwise.
Best of all, with Deep Word, you can test the software for free via their website. Integration with their API via one’s database, CRM, or LMS, requires only a few lines of code. This type of affordable, consumer-friendly access to synthetic video technology is providing more and more people with a synthetic media solution to the challenge of adjusting to increasingly virtual work and education. Book a call to learn more about integrations with your own software or jump right in by viewing Deep Word API’s documentation.
The way forward in virtual content is synthetic media. It’s a tool that has the power to facilitate vast improvements to virtual experiences and will ultimately impact society for the better, as long as we put it to good use.
