Union Govt Prepares to Crackdown on Deepfake — What is the Digital Threat all About

On November 24, Ashwani Vaishnav, the Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology told the press that the government is drafting the rules to regulate ‘deepfake technology’.

Deepfake technology is one that can manipulate and morph video and audio content. Even the prime minister of the country has not been spared by deepfake. On November 17, a doctored video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi made its appearance online where it looked like he was performing the Garba during a Navratri celebration.

Prime Minister Modi, when he spoke to the Press at the Bharatiya Janata Party's Diwali Milan programme in Delhi commented that he had seen that video and that he had not participated in any Garba performance since he left school!

Following the incident, Union Minister for State Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that the government would assist citizens in filing first information report (FIR) against social media platforms for violation of Information Technology rules.

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“We will start drafting the regulations today [November 23] itself. And within a very short timeframe, we will have a new set of regulations on deepfakes,” the minister said.

Terming deepfakes a ‘new threat to democracy’, the minister added: “Deepfakes He spoke how such technologies were weakening trust in society and its institutions. And how alarming it was that social media is enabling deepfakes to spread rapidly without any checks.

The regulations to contain deepfakes will have four pillars — detection, prevention, reporting, and awareness.

The ministerial intervention came almost three weeks after a deepfake video of Bollywood actress Rashmika Mandanna appeared online in which a person with her face was seen entering a lift.

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As deepfake technology becomes more sophisticated and advanced, researchers and tech companies are working on measures to detect them. They are developing technologies and softwares that can identify inconsistencies in manipulated content and verify its authenticity.

Spotting deepfakes

• Inconsistencies in facial expressions and movements that may appear out of sync with the audio.
• Inconsistencies between the spoken words and lip movements
• Unusual lighting and shadows
• Blurred or misaligned edges, especially around the hairline or the chin of a person that could be a hint that it is a digital manipulation.
• Unusual backgrounds with strange patterns, reflections, that look out of place.