South Korean Police Deploy Deepfake Detection Tool Prior to Elections

Amid a steep rise in politically motivated deepfakes, South Korea’s Nationwide Police Company (KNPA) has developed and deployed a device for detecting AI-generated content material to be used in potential legal investigations.

In keeping with the KNPA’s Nationwide Workplace of Investigation (NOI), the deep studying program was educated on roughly 5.2 million items of knowledge sourced from 5,400 Korean residents. It could actually decide whether or not a video (which it hasn’t been pretrained on) is actual or not in solely 5 to 10 minutes, with an accuracy price of round 80%. The device auto-generates a outcomes sheet that police can use in legal investigations.

As reported by Korean media, these outcomes shall be used to tell investigations however won’t be used as direct proof in legal trials. Police can even make house for collaboration with AI consultants in academia and enterprise.

AI safety consultants have known as for the usage of AI for good, together with detecting misinformation and deepfakes.

“That is the purpose: AI can assist us analyze [false content] at any scale,” Gil Shwed, CEO of Test Level, instructed Darkish Studying in an interview this week. Although AI is the illness, he stated, it is usually the treatment: “[Detecting fraud] used to require very complicated applied sciences, however with AI you are able to do the identical factor with a minimal quantity of data — not simply good and huge quantities of data.”

Korea’s Deepfake Downside

Whereas the remainder of the world waits in anticipation of deepfakes invading election seasons, Koreans have already been coping with the issue up shut and private.

The canary within the coal mine occurred throughout provincial elections in 2022, when a video unfold on social media showing to indicate President Yoon Suk Yeol endorsing a neighborhood candidate for the ruling celebration.

The sort of deception has recently grow to be extra prevalent. Final month, the nation’s Nationwide Election Fee revealed that between Jan. 29 and Feb. 16, it detected 129 deepfakes in violation of election legal guidelines — a determine that’s solely anticipated to rise as its April 10 Election Day approaches. All this regardless of a revised legislation that got here into impact on Jan. 29, stating that use of deepfake movies, photographs, or audio in reference to elections can earn a citizen as much as seven years in jail, and fines as much as 50 million gained (round $37,500). 

Not Simply Disinformation

Test Level’s Shwed warned that, like several new expertise, AI has its dangers. “So sure, there are dangerous issues that may occur and we have to defend in opposition to them,” he stated.

Faux info shouldn’t be as a lot the issue, he added. “The most important situation in human battle basically is that we do not see the entire image — we choose the weather [in the news] that we wish to see, after which primarily based on them decide,” he stated.

“It is not about disinformation, it is about what you consider in. And primarily based on what you consider in, you choose which info you wish to see. Not the opposite method round.”