Information security

Fake America great again

Several technologies have converged to make fakery easier, and they’re readily accessible: smartphones let anyone capture video footage, and powerful computer graphics tools have become much cheaper. Add artificial-intelligence software, which allows things to be distorted, remixed, and synthesized in mind-bending new ways. AI isn’t just a better version of Photoshop or iMovie. It lets a computer learn how the world looks and sounds so it can conjure up convincing simulacra.

I created the clip of Cruz using OpenFaceSwap, one of several face-switching programs that you can download for free. You need a computer with an advanced graphics chip, and this can set you back a few thousand bucks. But you can also rent access to a virtual machine for a few cents per minute using a cloud machine-learning platform like Paperspace. Then you simply feed in two video clips and sit back for a few hours as an algorithm figures out how each face looks and moves so that it can map one onto the other. Getting things to work is a bit of an art: if you choose clips that are too different, the result can be a nightmarish mishmash of noses, ears, and chins.