Dubai: The UAE has launched a ‘Deepfake Guide’ to raise awareness on both the harmful and beneficial uses of deepfake technology. Deepfake refers to convincingly faking audio and video to make it appear genuine, using artificial intelligence.
As part of the initiatives of UAE Council for Digital Wellbeing, chaired by Sheikh Saif Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, the UAE National Programme for Artificial Intelligence has launched the Deepfake Guide with the aim of raising awareness on the technology, its effect on social well-being, and the means to face the various challenges resulting from the harmful applications of such technologies.
Warning against misuse
The guide focuses on raising awareness on the most important challenges facing individuals, societies and countries in this field. This includes damaging someone’s reputation; publishing false news or fabricated content that impacts public opinion, affects political events and hinders government action; spreading rumours; infringing people’s privacy and exposing them to cyberbullying; affecting levels of trust; and producing fabricated evidence, which can negatively impact the judicial system in any society.
Promoting digital well-being
The guide aims to compliment the idea of comprehensive well-being in the UAE, enabling individuals to adopt healthy technological habits, introducing best technological practices to face digital challenges, and providing guidance on how to deal effectively with technology and ensure its positive impact on people’s lives.
Omar Sultan AlOlama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications, said: “The UAE National Programme for Artificial Intelligence supports all programmes and initiatives aiming at accelerating and promoting the adoption of modern technology in vital future sectors, while ensuring the highest levels of safety, privacy and security. The programme cooperates with various national and global government and private sector entities to ensure efficient usage of future technology for the benefit of the economy and the society as a whole.”
Pros and cons
With the advancement of modern technology, it has become easier for laypersons to alter audio and video content that may be used in cyberbullying.
On the other hand, there are many beneficial uses for advanced technology tools such as medical applications, movies and advertisements content creation, entertainment and visual effects, as well as customer service (virtual assistant), news broadcasting (virtual news broadcaster), among others.
Shallow and Deep Fake
The guide categorised fake content into two main categories: “shallow fakes” referring to videos in which the editing software is used to slow down the speech without changing the pitch, change dates and locations to make the videos appear recent or in different places. Deepfakes, on the other hand, refers to replacing the original face or voice with fake content developed using advanced technologies. The guide presents ways to detect fake content using systematic deepfake detection by AI-based tools that are regularly updated.
