Microsoft chief warns more deepfake threats could be coming soon TechRadar Skip to main content TechRadar is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here's why you can trust us. Microsoft chief warns more deepfake threats could be coming soon By Sead Fadilpašić published 27 September 2022 Deepfakes are getting more sophisticated (Image credit: Pexels) Audio player loading… When it comes to deepfakes, what we've seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg. In the near future, we won't be certain if the person we're speaking to on a video call is real, or an impostor, and crooks won't have trouble creating an entire chronology of fake videos to support their claims, or trick people into believing the legitimacy of an offer or campaign. These harrowing predictions come from Eric Horvitz, Microsoft's chief science officer, in a new research paper, titled "On the horizon: Interactive and compositional deepfakes". Deepfakes are "photoshopped" videos, essentially. By using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), a threat actor is able to create a video of a person saying things that they never said. Now, according to Horvitz, crooks are ready to take it to the next level. Interactive deepfakes are just as you'd expect - real-time videos with which users can interact, which are, in reality, utterly fake. Synthetic history Compositional deepfakes, on the other hand, are described as "sets of deepfakes" designed to integrate over time with "observed, expected, and engineered world events to create persuasive synthetic histories." "Synthetic histories can be constructed manually but may one day be guided by adversarial generative explanation (AGE) techniques," Horvitz adds. He also says that in the near future, it will be almost impossible to distinguish fake videos and fake content from authentic ones: "In the absence of mitigations, interactive and compositional deepfakes threaten to move us closer to a post-epistemic world, where fact cannot be distinguished from fiction."Read more> Scammers created a deepfake of top Binance exec to steal crypto funds (opens in new tab) > Google is cracking down hard on deepfakes (opens in new tab) > These are the best endpoint protection tools around (opens in new tab) This absence of mitigations stems from the fact that threat actors can pit artificial intelligence against analysis tools and develop deepfake content that is able to fool even the most advanced detection systems. "With this process at the foundation of deepfakes, neither pattern recognition techniques nor humans will be able to reliably recognize deepfakes," Horvitz notes. So, next time a family member calls from abroad to ask for money to pay the rent, make sure it's not a fraudster impersonating (opens in new tab) your loved ones. Check out the best firewalls (opens in new tab) around Via: VentureBeat (opens in new tab) Sead Fadilpašić Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he's written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He's also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications. See more Computing news Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to theTechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Thank you for signing up to TechRadar. You will receive a verification email shortly. There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again. MOST POPULARMOST SHARED1The iPhone 14 Pro is made of the wrong stuff; the Pixel 7 proves that to me27 new movies and TV shows on Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max and more this weekend (October 7)3Stop saying Mario doesn't have an accent in The Super Mario Bros. Movie4Microsoft Teams users are using it for a really bad reason, so stop now5Google Pixel Tablet is what Apple should've done ages ago1Best laptops for designers and coders 2The iPhone 14 Pro is made of the wrong stuff; the Pixel 7 proves that to me3Stop saying Mario doesn't have an accent in The Super Mario Bros. Movie4Microsoft Teams users are using it for a really bad reason, so stop now5iPhone 15 tipped to come with an upgraded 5G chip Technology Magazines (opens in new tab)● (opens in new tab)The best tech tutorials and in-depth reviewsFrom$12.99 (opens in new tab)View (opens in new tab)