Deepfakes Are Running Rampant as Tools to Detect Them Lag Behind (2)

Artificial intelligence is now so powerful it can trick people into believing an image of Pope Francis wearing a white puffy Balenciaga coat is real, but the digital tools to reliably identify faked images are struggling to keep up with the pace of content generation.

Just ask the researchers at Deakin University’s School of Information Technology, outside of Melbourne. Their algorithm performed the best in identifying the altered images of celebrities in a set of so-called deepfakes last year, according to Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Index 2023.

A fake image of Pope Francis generated by Midjourney AI, left, and a real photo of Pope Francis.

Source: Midjourney; AFP/Getty Images

“It’s a fairly good performance,” said Chang-Tsun Li, a professor at Deakin’s Centre for Cyber ...