Current Use
Today, the most common application of deep fakes is by individuals, but there have been some cases of organizations starting to use the technology. Overall, the main users of the technology are individuals. The use of this technology has skyrocketed over the
years, as John Letzing for the World Economic Forum (WEF) said that “from 2019 to 2020 the number of deep fakes online rose from 14,678 to 145,277” (Letzing, 2021), which is an increase of 900%. The most common use of deep-fake technology by individuals has
mainly been to get reactions and responses from others who end up viewing their videos. Many of these videos could be used to influence other people's thoughts and beliefs. For example, this
video
(Peretti, 2018) can make people think that former President Obama is saying some weird and uncharacteristic things that you’d normally not expect from him. While this video is made to spread awareness of the threat of deep fakes, if someone were to take a
clip of the video out of context, they could get reactions from people. This is the true threat of deep fakes, as stated by Mustak, who says that “they can be used for the purpose of widespread marketplace deception” (Mustak, 2023). In this quote, Mustak
gets at the main threat of deep fakes, which can cause widespread marketplace deception. For example, when the “CEO of Pepsi (Indra Nooyi) was deliberately misquoted as saying that Donald Trump supporters should “take their business elsewhere.” This prompted
boycott calls and a 3.75 percent decline in PepsiCo’s stock price.” (Mustak, 2023) This shows the catastrophic results of a deep fake because if something similar were to happen to Pepsi now, they would lose almost 9 billion dollars.
Here are all the things needed to make a deepfake today, but soon it could be a lot less