Deepfake used to attack activist couple shows new disinformation frontier
Deepfake used to attack
activist couple shows new disinformation frontier
Raphael
Satter July 15, 2020 3:07 AM / UPDATED 8 HOURS AGO
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Oliver
Taylor, a student at England’s University of Birmingham, is a twenty-something
with brown eyes, light stubble, and a slightly stiff smile.
A combination photograph
showing an image purporting to be of British student and freelance writer Oliver
Taylor (L) and a heat map of the same photograph produced by Tel Aviv-based
deepfake detection company Cyabra is seen in this undated handout photo
obtained by Reuters. The heat map, which was produced using one of Cyabra's
algorithms, highlights areas of suspected computer manipulation. The digital
inconsistencies were one of several indicators used by experts to determine
that Taylor was an online mirage. Cyabra/Handout via REUTERS
Online profiles describe him
as a coffee lover and politics junkie who was raised in a traditional Jewish
home. His half dozen freelance editorials and blog posts reveal an active
interest in anti-Semitism and Jewish affairs, with bylines in the Jerusalem Post
and the Times of Israel.
The catch? Oliver Taylor
seems to be an elaborate fiction.
His university says it has no
record of him. He has no obvious online footprint beyond an account on the
question-and-answer site Quora, where he was active for two days in March. Two
newspapers that published his work say they have tried and failed to confirm
his identity. And experts in deceptive imagery used state-of-the-art forensic
analysis programs to determine that Taylor’s profile photo is a hyper-realistic
forgery - a “deepfake.”
Who is behind Taylor isn’t
known to Reuters. Calls to the U.K. phone number he supplied to editors drew an
automated error message and he didn’t respond to messages left at the Gmail
address he used for correspondence.
Reuters was alerted to Taylor
by London academic Mazen Masri, who drew international attention in late 2018
when he helped launch an Israeli lawsuit against the surveillance company NSO
on behalf of alleged Mexican victims of the company’s phone hacking technology.
In an article in U.S. Jewish
newspaper The Algemeiner, Taylor had accused Masri and his wife, Palestinian
rights campaigner Ryvka Barnard, of being “known terrorist sympathizers.”
Masri and Barnard were taken
aback by the allegation, which they deny. But they were also baffled as to why
a university student would single them out. Masri said he pulled up Taylor’s
profile photo. He couldn’t put his finger on it, he said, but something about
the young man’s face “seemed off.”
Six experts interviewed by
Reuters say the image has the characteristics of a deepfake.
“The distortion and
inconsistencies in the background are a tell-tale sign of a synthesized image,
as are a few glitches around his neck and collar,” said digital image forensics
pioneer Hany Farid, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
Artist Mario Klingemann, who
regularly uses deepfakes in his work, said the photo “has all the hallmarks.”
“I’m 100 percent sure,” he
said.
‘A VENTRILOQUIST’S DUMMY’
The Taylor persona is a rare
in-the-wild example of a phenomenon that has emerged as a key anxiety of the
digital age: The marriage of deepfakes and
disinformation.
The threat is drawing
increasing concern in Washington and Silicon Valley. Last year House
Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff warned that computer-generated
video could “turn a world leader into a ventriloquist’s dummy.” Last month
Facebook announced the conclusion of its Deepfake Detection Challenge - a
competition intended to help researchers automatically identify falsified
footage. Last week online publication The Daily Beast revealed a network of
deepfake journalists - part of a larger group of bogus personas seeding
propaganda online.
Deepfakes like Taylor are
dangerous because they can help build “a totally untraceable identity,” said
Dan Brahmy, whose Israel-based startup Cyabra specializes in detecting such
images.
Brahmy said investigators
chasing the origin of such photos are left “searching for a needle in a
haystack – except the needle doesn’t exist.”
Taylor appears to have had no
online presence until he started writing articles in late December. The
University of Birmingham said in a statement it could not find “any record of
this individual using these details.” Editors at the Jerusalem Post and The
Algemeiner say they published Taylor after he pitched them stories cold over
email. He didn’t ask for payment, they said, and they didn’t take aggressive
steps to vet his identity.
“We’re not a
counterintelligence operation,” Algemeiner Editor-in-chief Dovid Efune said,
although he noted that the paper had introduced new safeguards since.
After Reuters began asking
about Taylor, The Algemeiner and the Times of Israel deleted his work. Taylor
emailed both papers protesting the removal, but Times of Israel Opinion Editor
Miriam Herschlag said she rebuffed him after he failed to prove his identity.
Efune said he didn’t respond to Taylor’s messages.
The Jerusalem Post and Arutz
Sheva have kept Taylor’s articles online, although the latter removed the
“terrorist sympathizers” reference following a complaint from Masri and
Barnard. The Post’s editor-in-chief, Yaakov Katz, didn’t respond when asked
whether Taylor’s work would stay up. Arutz Sheva editor Yoni Kempinski said
only that “in many cases” news outlets “use pseudonyms to byline opinion
articles.” Kempinski declined to elaborate or say whether he considered Taylor
a pseudonym.
Oliver Taylor’s articles drew
minimal engagement on social media, but the Times of Israel’s Herschlag said
they were still dangerous - not only because they could distort the public
discourse but also because they risked making people in her position less
willing to take chances on unknown writers.
“Absolutely we need to screen
out impostors and up our defenses,” she said. “But I don’t want to set up these
barriers that prevent new voices from being heard.”
Reporting by Raphael Satter;
editing by Chris Sanders and Edward Tobin
He is no scam,i tested him and he delivered a good job,he helped me settle bank loans,he also helped my son upgrade his scores at high school final year which made him graduate successfully and he gave my son free scholarship into the college,all i had to do was to settle the bills for the tools on the job,i used $500 to get a job of over $50000 done all thanks to Walt,he saved me from all my troubles,sharing this is how i can show gratitude in return for all he has done for me and my family
ReplyDeleteGmail; Brillianthackers800@gmail.com
Whatsapp number; +1(224)2140835