What do marketers need to know about video deepfakes

When you hear "deepfake," you might immediately think of the fraud, ethically questionable, or even downright unsettling videos that have bobbled across the internet over the last several years. As fake video content - - and the AI technology behind their creation - continue to become more sophisticated, it's essential that marketers and creators across all industries understand how they work and explore the ways they can be used in order to remain ahead in our changing world.

For those who aren't familiar, deepfakes are synthetic media that has been altered digitally to substitute or replicate a person's likeness convincingly, resulting in the capability to make videos that appear and feel like real yet don't. Therefore, it's not surprising that they might receive a negative rap for spreading misinformation or exploiting the likenesses of people.

Like any technology, though, it's all in how you make use of it. Innovative marketers and creatives have been using deepfake technology -- in a responsible and ethical mannertoto make new artistic forms and tell fresh stories as well as improve their own video marketing campaigns.

In this post we'll look at some instances of deepfake technology being used for good and useful purposes, along with suggestions about how to play around on your own with this technology.

What's a fake deepfake?

A deepfake is a film, or audio recording, of someone whose facial or body has been digitally modified. Deepfakes use AI to produce a sense of likeness by using patterns to determine the appearance, tone and movement.

Other terms for a deepfake could refer to artificial or synthetic media, or AI-generated content.

 A short history of deepfakes

The creation of Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) began the trend towards realistic fakes in 2014. GANs comprise two artificial intelligence systems that make fakes and recognize forgery which allows the AI to grow over time.

The creation of Deepfakes is also possible by using a deep-learning computer network, also known as a variational auto-encoder (VAE). VAEs can be trained to encode images into low-dimensional representations of the object and decode the representations and convert them into images that move.

The phrase "deepfake" wasn't coined until 2017. In the year, the media almost collectively sounded the alarm over deepfakes - with the first viral deepfake video featuring Barack Obama and Donald Trump being shared through social networks.

However, deepfakes have other uses which are becoming more useful to ordinary marketers - not just hackers or online trolls who try to spread misinformation.

How do deepfakes work?

Machine learning AI is a critical component of the process of making a deepfake. Deepfakes depend on this tech to spot trends in visuals and information.

To make a deepfake video, a developer needs to supply these machine-learning algorithm with a lot of real footage. This then trains the deep neural network to detect patterns, tone facial expressions, tone many more. Next, it is time to combine these learnings with images.

It doesn't take much to build a fake deepfake. just existing video or audio of the person you're trying to replicate. Although it might appear difficult initially, constructing a deepfake requires no complicated tools - only basic graphic design knowledge and editing video skills.

Examples of artful video deepfakes

Marketers are in the early stages of adopting deepfakes and other AI technologies for video and digital marketing. These examples of fakes don't precisely fit into the marketing toolkit just yet, but they showcase the power of these AI technologies in the moment.

 1. Chris Shimojima's "Dolche - Big Man"

This breathtaking Staff Picked music video from director Chris Shimojima takes deepfake technology and flips it on its head, incorporating the faces of 14 performers (and 40 other contributions) to create a compelling story. It's an artistic surprising mix of technology as well as human voice.

 2. David Beckham's multiple different

Malaria Must Die made use of AI to alter soccer player David Beckham to speak in nine different languages, leveraging deepfake technology in order to create an enormous splash and dramatically increase their campaigns' reach.

 3. Salvador Dali's museum greeting

It took over 1,000 hours of machine learning for the Dali museumMuseum to get their deepfake version of Salvador Dali precisely perfect. This innovation gives museum-goers an opportunity to see things from a different angle: they get to learn about art from the artist himself!

Three common uses of deepfake technology for video

Although some of the applications for deepfakes may be beyond the common marketer's grasp, there are many creative and exciting ways to leverage the technology of deepfakes in your work.

• Repair sloppy lines in posts: For anyone with even cursory editing experience You've experienced the struggles and challenges of mixing edited audio clips from a casual interview. If your interviewer misspoke, or simply didn't answer with an entire sentence, using deepfake technology to fill in the blanks is a great option to keep your post-production procedure moving forward with no need to reshoot. (Just ensure you have the permission of your subject first, of course!)
   
  
• Personalize customer videos at size Marketers can use easy personalization by sending video greetings or promotional videos that feature prospects' names or the names of their companies. All you require is their names, and some audio from your on-camera talent for the deepfake technology to incorporate it to the video.
   
  
• Translate your video Deepfake technology opens a brand new dimension of effortless translation. Instead of using subtitles, artificial intelligence is able to introduce spoken-language translations or created using an audio library or the voice of the actor who recorded it.

New tech, new opportunities

We may not know exactly about what future developments in AI will provide however it is a fact that deepfakes will not go away. Like other AI-powered technologies (chatGPT, anyone? ) People who are eager to try deepfakes while keeping their eyes open to the possibility of pitfalls, will have the ability to be competitive in the ever-changing world of video.