Deep Fakes with Lonnie Waugh

A "deep fake" typically refers to a video that has been edited to replace the person in the original video with someone else, commonly a public figure in a way that makes the video look entirely authentic. These are time consuming to make but can be very convincing.

Today's guest is Lonnie Waugh. Lonnie is a web developer, software engineer, and deep fake creator. He has been doing deep fake videos for years with a sense of humor traditionally using the OneDuality on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

Show Notes:

• [0:56] - Lonnie describes what a deep fake is and what he does for his YouTube channel to make things humorous.
• [1:52] - To accomplish this in the past, it was very extensive, but now can be done from home with the right equipment and software.
• [2:37] - The process to create something like this is very time consuming and Lonnie describes a frustration with rendering something and going back to edit.
• [3:32] - Lonnie outlines what this process looks like for him and why he chooses political conferences for a lot of his videos.
• [5:30] - In addition to finding all the movements needed for the face he's using to replace the original, Lonnie also does some pre-processing. This isn't necessary but he explains why he chooses to take the time to do it.
• [7:02] - The software used to do this is open source but not yet available for Mac.
• [8:18] - Because Lonnie has been doing this for so long, he knows what to look for to determine if the content is real or a deep fake, but points out that if you don't know what to look for, it is easy to be fooled.
• [9:27] - Lonnie and Chris describe some of the little nuances and indicators that Lonnie can notice.
• [10:49] - Lonnie shares that he cannot monetize his YouTube channel because of the copyrighted content he uses so it is not worth his time to go back and fix some of the most minor indicators of it being fake.
• [11:12] - Lighting also makes things challenging and Lonnie shares an experience with a music video director not consulting a professional.
• [12:28] - Lonnie has created content for music videos and hopes to eventually create for commercials.
• [13:38] - Discussing the technical aspects of the process, Lonnie describes how many frames a creator should use and how the AI recognizes faces.
• [15:47] - There are different modes that creators can use.
• [16:23] - Because of copyrights, there are challenges to deep fakes when using obvious original videos.
• [17:21] - Politicians are typically in the public domain but celebrities and actors who have enough legal backing could find each video one by one and take them down.
• [17:57] - For those who are not celebrities or political figures, there's likely not enough video content available for a deep fake to be made of them. Lonnie says it can be done with photos but thousands of photos would be needed.
• [18:51] - The quality of the video used is important as well.
• [19:47] - There is an app that can take photos and video and replace faces. To Lonnie they look good but are obviously not real. Some people may be fooled by them, though.
• [20:45] - At the moment it is not likely of someone creating a deep fake of someone with malicious intent unless there's a lot of professionally done video content of them in all different kinds of lighting.
• [21:38] - Lonnie and Chris discuss the amount of work involved in creating a convincing deep fake of the average Joe.
• [22:29] - There is software that will use a single photo to impose onto a video but they are not convincing and are typically used for entertainment.
• [23:40] - In regards to romance scams, Chris shares that this could eventually be something used to create video content.
• [25:08] - Lonnie explains how another YouTuber has used clips to startle people.
• [26:09] - There is a lot of thought being put into this in the political world and will potentially be legislated in the future.
• [27:33] - While the technology can be abused, Lonnie has not yet seen it used in a dangerous way and says that the abuse of it is pretty predictable right now.
• [28:11] - Lonnie references a recent legal case that may have abused this type of technology.

Thanks for joining us on Easy Prey. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review.

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