deepfake

noun

deep·fake ˈdēp-ˌfāk

plural deepfakes

: an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said

Two artists and an advertising company created a deepfake of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg saying things he never said, and uploaded it to Instagram.—

Samantha Cole

No law regulates deepfakes, though some legal and technical experts have recommended adapting current laws covering libel, defamation, identity fraud or impersonating a government official. But concerns of overregulation abound: The dividing line between a parody protected by the First Amendment and deepfake political propaganda may not always be clear-cut.—

Drew Harwell

With Mueller warning of future election meddling, [Representative Adam] Schiff said that one of his biggest concerns for future campaigns was the development of deepfake technology—the ability to manipulate videos or audio to change what a person appears to have said. 'How do we prepare against the late distribution of a fraudulent video?' Schiff said.—

Elias Groll and Amy Mackinnon

Did you know?

The old maxim "things aren’t always as they seem" seems more true than ever in the age of deepfakes. A deepfake is an image, or a video or audio recording, that has been edited using an algorithm to replace the person in the original with someone else (especially a public figure) in a way that makes it look authentic. The fake in deepfake is transparent: deepfakes are not real. The deep is less self-explanatory: this half of the term is specifically influenced by deep learning—that is, machine learning using artificial neural networks with multiple layers of algorithms.

Examples of deepfake in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web This model can’t produce deepfakes, because it was trained on only a creative universe. —

Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, 10 Apr. 2024 Some warn that reliably detecting deepfakes will probably become impossible, as the tech behind AI image generators changes and improves. —

Gerrit De Vynck, Washington Post, 5 Apr. 2024 Prior to using Loti’s technology, Jacquemin said, his agency’s staff would have to fight the problem of deepfakes on a much more ad-hoc basis. —

Wendy Lee, Los Angeles Times, 2 Apr. 2024 But there were also talks from the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union (SAG-AFTRA) about deepfakes and the impacts that AI could have on the careers of gamemakers. —

Megan Farokhmanesh, WIRED, 26 Mar. 2024 The disclosures to users are supposed to counteract the risks of deepfakes, or alterations to real footage that could mislead people. —

David Meyer, Fortune, 19 Mar. 2024 Video generators like Sora could also be used by cyber criminals to create deepfakes of executives, actors, and politicians in compromising situations to exert influence or to ask for a ransom. —

Britney Nguyen, Quartz, 17 Mar. 2024 Eight states have enacted laws regulating deepfakes, joining California and Texas, which in 2019 banned the use of deepfakes in elections. —

Kaleigh Rogers, ABC News, 27 Mar. 2024 More of these deepfakes were posted online in 2023 than every other year combined, and high-profile incidents have continued into 2024. —

Kevin Collier, NBC News, 19 Mar. 2024

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'deepfake.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.