- Coronavirus and human rights: Preparing WITNESS’s response COVID-19 (Coronavirus) is creating rapid and dangerous human rights implications globally, directly impacting people’s lives, livelihoods, security, health, ability to work and freedom of movement and assembly, as well as leading to implications for digital rights and increasing online surveillance. The immediate implications of coronavirus – quarantine, enhanced emergency powers, restrictions on sharing information – make […]
- What We Learned from the Pretoria Deepfakes Workshop (Full Report) —February 19, 2020 On 26 November 2019, WITNESS hosted a workshop at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, on deepfakes and synthetic media. Today we are releasing a full-length report on the proceedings of the workshop detailing presentation sessions, discussion points and a range of solution areas identified, compiled by Ade Johnson of the university’s […]
- Twitter Released A Draft Policy on Synthetic Media. Here’s What Stood Out to the Activists We Consulted. — January 28, 2020 Earlier this month, Facebook released its policy on manipulated media. As a civil society organization with expert knowledge on the subject, WITNESS was asked to give input on the policy while it was under development, and it’s worth recognizing the positives of Facebook’s pro-active approach in developing a response to this […]
- The Pros and Cons of Facebook’s New Deepfakes Policy Yesterday Facebook released its policy on enforcing against manipulated media, detailing how the company would respond to deepfakes, and to a lesser extent shallowfakes. On Wednesday 8 January 2020 the US Congress will hold another hearing on digital manipulation, following on from the first congressional hearing on deepfakes in June 2019. Over the past two years WITNESS has […]
- To Fight Deepfakes Build Media Literacy, Say African Activists —December 23, 2019 In late November 2019, WITNESS led a workshop on deepfakes at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Building on the success of a workshop in Brazil in July, and with another workshop in Malaysia scheduled for 2020, the event series has been a unique effort to engage academics, journalists, researchers and human rights activists […]
- In Africa, Fear of State Violence Informs Deepfake Threat Our deepfakes preparedness workshop in South Africa revealed that perceived threats from synthetic media vary greatly by region, especially where repressive government is a factor.
- Deepfakes and Synthetic Media: Updated Survey of Solutions against Malicious Usages Last updated: June 2019 (NOTE: please send feedback on areas/examples we are missing to sam [at} witness.org: this is not a comprehensive list!) This is a survey of solutions around the emerging and potential malicious uses of so-called “deepfakes” and other forms of AI-generated “synthetic media” and how we push back to defend evidence, the truth […]
- Deepfakes and Synthetic Media: Survey of Solutions against Malicious Usages This is the second in a series of blogs on a new area of focus at WITNESS around the emerging and potential malicious uses of so-called “deepfakes” and other forms of AI-generated “synthetic media” and how we push back to defend evidence, the truth and freedom of expression. The first in the blog series can be […]
- Deepfakes and Synthetic Media: What should we fear? What can we do? This is the first in a series of blogs on a new area of focus at WITNESS around the emerging and potential malicious uses of so-called “deepfakes” and other forms of AI-generated “synthetic media” and how we push back to defend evidence, the truth and freedom of expression. We’ll be sharing expanded elements of the report […]
