• Home
  • Anti-Corruption
  • Fact-Check
  • Economy
  • National
    • Government
  • Security
  • Features
  • State
  • Event
    • PR Nigeria Award
  • E-Paper
Search
  • Home
  • About
  • Adverts
  • Contact
Sign in
Welcome! Log into your account
Forgot your password? Get help
Password recovery
Recover your password
A password will be e-mailed to you.
PRNIGERIA PRNigeria News
PRNIGERIA PRNIGERIA
  • Home
  • Anti-Corruption
    • ICPC Secures Conviction of Rector for Running Unaccredited Degree Programmes

      Engr Abba Babagana Dalori

      Engr Dalori Forfeits Galaxy Hospital, Petrol Station, Properties & Cash

      Chinese nationals jailed in Lagos

      Court Jails Nine Chinese Nationals for Cybercrime in Lagos

      ASUU

      Tackle Corruption, Institutional Decay – ASUU Charges FG

      EFCC Arraigns Bauchi Accountant General Over N8bn Fraud as Court Sentences…

  • Fact-Check
  • Economy
    • Customs Partners US Mission to Prevent Expanded Visa Ban

      Nigeria Customs Partners China on Smarter Ports, Officer Training, Reforms

      Comptroller General Nigerian Customs Bashir Adewale

      Customs Moves Against 223 Importers in N379bn Permit Breach

      Bashir Adewale Adeniyi Customs Boss

      How Customs is Tightening Borders to Stop Illicit Cash Flows –…

      Customs boss, CGC Bashir Adewale Adeniyi with NAFDAC DG Professor Moji Adeyeye

      Codeine, Tramadol Worth ₦20.5bn Seized as Customs-NAFDAC Cooperation Deepens

  • National
    • Okello Oculi

      Okello Oculi: A Pan-Africanist Asteroid Burns out Forever By Is’haq Modibbo…

      Coordinated Security Efforts Making Nigeria Safer Under Tinubu’s Administration – NSA…

      Abike Dabiri CEO NIDCOM

      NiDCOM Urges Restraint as Ghanaians Protest Against Nigerians Over Alleged Crimes

      Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Yusuf Tuggar with the President of NIPR, Dr. Ike Neliaku during the unveiling of the National Reputation Management Group at Abuja on 15th October 2024.

      NRMG Charged to Lead Battle Against Fake News, Reframe Nigeria’s Image

      Police Officer

      Again, FCT Police Raid Criminal Hideouts, Arrest 66 Suspects

    • Government
      • Alhaji Ahmed Maiyaki, Commissioner of Information, Kaduna State

        Kaduna Governor Appoints Strategic Communicator, Ahmed Maiyaki as Information Commissioner

        Okello Oculi

        Okello Oculi: A Pan-Africanist Asteroid Burns out Forever By Is’haq Modibbo…

        Coordinated Security Efforts Making Nigeria Safer Under Tinubu’s Administration – NSA…

        Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani

        Gov Sani sacks Commissioner, Announces New Appointment

        ICPC Secures Conviction of Rector for Running Unaccredited Degree Programmes

  • Security
    • Coordinated Security Efforts Making Nigeria Safer Under Tinubu’s Administration – NSA…

      3,000 Terrorists Killed, 120,000 Surrendered in Two Years — Defence Chief

      Police Officer

      Again, FCT Police Raid Criminal Hideouts, Arrest 66 Suspects

      Troops Avert Terrorists’ IED Attack in Borno

      Military Troops during operations

      Troops Eliminate Terrorists, Disrupt Logistics Supply in Borno

  • Features
    • Okello Oculi

      Okello Oculi: A Pan-Africanist Asteroid Burns out Forever By Is’haq Modibbo…

      Leon Usigbe

      Death, you can’t be Proud of this By Abdulrahman Abdulraheem 

      Tinubu’s Plateau Gambit – Yilwatda, 2027, and the Return of the…

      Ozumi and a recipient of a wheelchair

      Wheels of Hope: How a Simple Gift is Reshaping Lives at…

      Late Ex-President Muhammadu Buhari and Mansur Liman

      “Buhari: A Blunt, Honest Leader Who Laughed at His Own Predicament”

  • State
    • Alhaji Ahmed Maiyaki, Commissioner of Information, Kaduna State

      Kaduna Governor Appoints Strategic Communicator, Ahmed Maiyaki as Information Commissioner

      Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani

      Gov Sani sacks Commissioner, Announces New Appointment

      ICPC Secures Conviction of Rector for Running Unaccredited Degree Programmes

      United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres

      Palestinian Statehood Is a Right, Not a Privilege – UN Boss,…

      Police Officer

      Again, FCT Police Raid Criminal Hideouts, Arrest 66 Suspects

  • Event
    • Founder Image Merchant Promotion Ltd, Yushau Shuaib, Nigeria Customs CG, CGC Bashir Adewale Adeniyi and the IPRA representative during the 2024 GWA awards in Belgrade, Serbia

      IPRA Celebrates 70th Anniversary, Hosts 2025 Golden World Awards in Ghana

      IMPR Interns

      Unpacking Dr. Fatima Binta’s NIPR Vision: A Candid Chat with PRNigeria…

      Dr. Ahmadu Fatimah Binta

      Beyond the Clinic: Dr. Fatimah Binta Reveals PR’s Impact on Medicine

      FGC Yauri schoolgirls

      Kidnapped FGC Yauri Schoolgirls Defy Odds, Graduate with Distinction from Top…

      Super Falcons wins WAFCON Trophy

      VON Apologizes for Erroneous WAFCON Report, Cites Possible Security Breach, Identifies…

    • PR Nigeria Award
  • E-Paper

    Understanding How Deepfakes are Supercharging Fake News and Ways to Spot Them 

    By
    Mohammed Dahiru Lawal
    -
    July 27, 2021
    Deep Fakes which are manipulated media; video, audio or both where someone's likeness is replaced with someone else’s likeness, where people can be made to appear as if they have said or done something that never actually happened, but merely digital altering of contents

    Understanding How Deepfakes are Supercharging Fake News and Ways to Spot Them 

    Mohammed Dahiru Lawal

    Imagine not being able to trust what you hear or see when you watch a video online, a celebrity seen in a scandal that generates controversy but that celebrity was never actually in that video, a politician delivers a disastrous speech in the eve of an election but he never said those words, or a religious figure incites violence in a mammoth crowd but never was there in flesh. I am talking about Deep Fakes which are manipulated media; video, audio or both where someone’s likeness is replaced with someone else’s likeness, where people can be made to appear as if they have said or done something that never actually happened, but merely digital altering of contents.  

    This involves digitally altering media contents to show whatever the generator intends to display. The technology can create convincing but entirely fictional photos or videos from scratch and has already attained notoriety in places like the United States. For instance, a deepfake video featuring the likeness of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating that “whoever controls the data, controls the future” surfaced on the Internet on the eve of United States Congressional hearings on Artificial Intelligence he was scheduled to attend at the time.

    Such a trend no doubt supercharges the spread of intentional falsehood as actual news designed to advance a malicious goal. 

    The first deepfakes surfaced in 2017 when a Reddit user posted several pornographic videos with simulated celebrity faces. Since then, deep fakes have come a long way, with fewer and fewer training images or videos required for algorithms to generate believable versions of real people’s faces. One expert predicts entirely realistic deep fakes could be possible in as little as six months.

    The code for algorithms to generate deep fakes is freely available on open-source platforms such as Github. Sites that offer deep fake creation services are also popping up, charging as little as $2 an hour for deep learning algorithms to be trained on source images then generate a fake video, which can take around five to eight hours to be created, most of which is the time required for algorithms to learn from source data.

    There are even smartphone apps that make use of deepfake tech. Zao is a Chinese iPhone app that swaps people’s faces into famous movies, while an app that has since been taken down, DeepNude, altered photos of women, so they appeared naked.

    The consequence of this when used as propaganda material is that people do not just start to believe things that are not true but they refuse to believe things that are actually true. Therefore, understanding how to detect deep fakes has become vital.  

    Some so-called “deep fakes” are harmless fun, but others are made with a more sinister purpose. But how do we know when a video has been manipulated?

    Read Also:

    • Kaduna Governor Appoints Strategic Communicator, Ahmed Maiyaki as Information Commissioner
    • Customs Partners US Mission to Prevent Expanded Visa Ban
    • Okello Oculi: A Pan-Africanist Asteroid Burns out Forever By Is’haq Modibbo Kawu

    Researchers from Binghamton University, State University of New York have teamed up with Intel Corp. to develop a tool called FakeCatcher, which boasts an accuracy rate above 90%.

    FakeCatcher works by analyzing the subtle differences in skin color caused by the human heartbeat.

    Similarly, in September 2020, Microsoft has developed a tool to spot deep fakes – computer-manipulated images in which one person’s likeness has been used to replace that of another.

    The software analyses photos and videos to give a confidence score about whether the material is likely to have been artificially created.

    The firm says it hopes the tech will help “combat disinformation.”

    Siwei Lyu, Director of Computer Vision and Machine Learning Lab (CVML) of University at Albany, also gave the following tips: 

    1. Look for individual hairs, frizz, and flyaways: 

    One area that is often a giveaway is the hairdo of a subject’s video – faked people don’t get frizz or flyaways because individual hairs won’t be visible. “Fake videos usually have trouble generating realistic hair,” says Lyu.

    1. Watch the eyes:

    With the regular blinking and other minute movements that are typical of a real person, one of the biggest challenges for deep fake creators is to generate realistic eyes, “When a person is in conversation, their eyes follow the person they’re talking to. But in a deep fake, you may spot a lazy eye or an odd gaze,” says Lyu.

    1. Check the teeth:

    Like hair, teeth tend to be tough to generate individually. “Synthesized teeth normally look like a monolithic white slab because algorithms don’t have the ability to learn such a detail,” says Lyu.

    1. Observe the facial profile:

    Does the person saying that shocking thing look a little odd when they turn away from the camera? If a video has been manipulated with a face swap, they may appear to be facing the wrong direction or their facial proportions may become skewed when the subject is looking away.

    1. Watch the video on the big screen: 

    On the smaller screens of smartphones, any of these inconsistencies of a fabricated video are less likely to be visible. Watching a video in full-screen on a laptop or desktop monitor makes it easier to spot the visual artefacts of editing, and can reveal other contextual inconsistencies between the subject of the video and where they are – for example, a clip of someone purportedly in, say, the UK, but against a backdrop with a car driving on the wrong side of the road.

    If you have a video editing program such as Final Cut or iMovie, you can slow down the playback rate or zoom in to examine faces.

    1. Check the emotionality of the video:

    As with extraordinary headlines that just so happen to appear around major events – like elections or disasters – a well-placed video that tugs at the heartstrings or fuels righteous outrage may be a deep fake designed to do just that.

    The researcher produced this media literacy article per the Dubawa 2021 Kwame Kari Kari Fellowship partnership with PRNigeria to facilitate the ethos of “truth” in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.

    VISIT OUR OTHER WEBSITES
    PRNigeria.com EconomicConfidential.com PRNigeria.com/Hausa/
    EmergencyDigest.com PoliticsDigest.ng TechDigest.ng
    HealthDigest.ng SpokesPersonsdigest.com TeensDigest.ng
    ArewaAgenda.com Hausa.ArewaAgenda.com YAShuaib.com
    • TAGS
    • Deep Fake Technology
    • Digital
    • Fake News
    • Microsoft
    • prnigeria
    Previous articleRedeployment: The List of Posting of 24 New Police AIGs
    Next articleTheatre Commander, UNOCHA Enhance Humanitarian Activities in North-East
    Mohammed Dahiru Lawal
    Mohammed Dahiru Lawal

    RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

    Department of State Security Service DSS

    Army, DSS-Backed Hybrid Forces Neutralize 45 Bandits in Niger Operation

    PRNigeria Young Communication Fellowship 2025 logo

    PRNigeria Opens Application for 2025 Young Communication Fellowship

    Troops of Operation FANSAN YANMA

    Troops Kill Three Terrorist Leaders in Sokoto Ambush, Recover Weapons

    Bashir Adewale Adeniyi Customs Boss

    How Customs is Tightening Borders to Stop Illicit Cash Flows – CG Adeniyi 

    FACT-CHECK: Did a N10bn Lafia Flyover Collapse Three Weeks After Commissioning in Nasarawa?

    NAF combat-ready Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) operators

    NAF Bolsters Battlespace Dominance with New Combat-Ready UAV Operators

    PHOTOS: How Nigerian Military’s Coordinated Air and Ground Assault Crushed Terrorists in Warari Operation

    Brigadier General Olakunle Oluseye Nafiu, Director General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC)

    NYSC Seeks Stakeholder Support to Enhance Orientation Exercises

    Late President Muhammadu Buhari

    Walson-Jack: Buhari Was a Pillar of Integrity in Nigeria’s Public Sector

    CDS Musa

    CDS Hails ‘Produce for Lagos’ as Blueprint for National Security

    Military Troops in Action

    Nigerian Troops Neutralize Over 100 Bandits in Decisive Warari Operation

    NSCDC, DSS Deepen Synergy to Enhance Security in FCT

    Recent Posts

    • Kaduna Governor Appoints Strategic Communicator, Ahmed Maiyaki as Information Commissioner
    • Customs Partners US Mission to Prevent Expanded Visa Ban
    • Okello Oculi: A Pan-Africanist Asteroid Burns out Forever By Is’haq Modibbo Kawu
    • Coordinated Security Efforts Making Nigeria Safer Under Tinubu’s Administration – NSA Ribadu
    • Gov Sani sacks Commissioner, Announces New Appointment
    • Home
    • About
    • Adverts
    • Contact
    © 2020 PRNigeria. All Rights Reserved.
    Latest News
    Kaduna Governor Appoints Strategic Communicator, Ahmed Maiyaki as Information CommissionerCustoms Partners US Mission to Prevent Expanded Visa BanOkello Oculi: A Pan-Africanist Asteroid Burns out Forever By Is'haq Modibbo KawuCoordinated Security Efforts Making Nigeria Safer Under Tinubu's Administration - NSA RibaduGov Sani sacks Commissioner, Announces New AppointmentICPC Secures Conviction of Rector for Running Unaccredited Degree ProgrammesPalestinian Statehood Is a Right, Not a Privilege - UN Boss, GuterresNiDCOM Urges Restraint as Ghanaians Protest Against Nigerians Over Alleged Crimes3,000 Terrorists Killed, 120,000 Surrendered in Two Years — Defence ChiefNRMG Charged to Lead Battle Against Fake News, Reframe Nigeria’s ImageAgain, FCT Police Raid Criminal Hideouts, Arrest 66 SuspectsTroops Avert Terrorists’ IED Attack in BornoTroops Eliminate Terrorists, Disrupt Logistics Supply in BornoIPRA Celebrates 70th Anniversary, Hosts 2025 Golden World Awards in GhanaUnpacking Dr. Fatima Binta's NIPR Vision: A Candid Chat with PRNigeria Interns
    X whatsapp