Sickos behind celebrity porn deepfakes can now be exposed by Facebook

FACEBOOK is cracking down on fake images used to mislead its users.

Scientists at the US tech titan said Wednesday that they developed software to not only identify “deepfake” images but figure out where they came from.

Compilation of real photos and 'deepfakes' created using artificial intelligence — Compilation of real photos and ‘deepfakes’ created using artificial intelligenceCredit: Facebook

Deepfakes are photos, videos or audio clips altered using artificial intelligence to appear authentic.

Experts have warned that the realistic phoneys can mislead or be completely false.

The technology has previously been used to make fake videos of politicians saying something they didn’t, and to create pornography using the likeness of a celebrity without their consent.

Facebook research scientists Tal Hassner and Xi Yin worked with Michigan State University to create software that reverse engineers deepfake images.

Facebook has created software that can identify deepfakes and figure out where they came fromCredit: AFP

The tool figures out how the fakes were made and where they originated.

“Our method will facilitate deepfake detection and tracing in real-world settings, where the deepfake image itself is often the only information detectors have to work with,” the scientists said in a blog post.

“This work will give researchers and practitioners tools to better investigate incidents of coordinated disinformation using deepfakes, as well as open up new directions for future research,” they added.

Facebook’s new software runs deepfakes through a network to search for imperfections left during the manufacturing process, which the scientists say alter an image’s digital “fingerprint.”

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“In digital photography, fingerprints are used to identify the digital camera used to produce an image,” the scientists said.

“Similar to device fingerprints, image fingerprints are unique patterns left on images… that can equally be used to identify the generative model that the image came from.”

“Our research pushes the boundaries of understanding in deepfake detection,” they said.

Microsoft late last year unveiled software that can help spot deepfake photos or videos, adding to an arsenal of programs designed to fight the hard-to-detect images ahead of the US presidential election.

The company’s Video Authenticator software analyses an image or each frame of a video, looking for evidence of manipulation that could be invisible to the naked eye.

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