A REPORT FROM THE CENTER FOR AN INFORMED PUBLIC

In July 2020, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP) and Microsoft’s Defending Democracy Program convened a three-part workshop with experts from the technology industry, media organizations, government, and academia to discuss the state of media manipulated by Artificial Intelligence (AI), also known as deepfakes. The invited participants included representatives from major tech companies and social media platforms, academia and think tanks, major international, national and regional news organizations, fact-checking groups, civil society organizations, and elected officials and government technology professionals.

The workshops’ objective was to discuss how to plan for the presence of deepfake technology and guard against it adversely affecting the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Propelled by the staggering spread of less technologically sophisticated misinformation and disinformation during the presidential election in 2016, experts and citizens alike have expressed growing concern about the potential for deepfakes to make it even more challenging to distinguish between authentic and manipulated media.

The three days of virtual roundtable discussions were structured to look at the deepfake issue through three distinct lenses: technology industry, journalism, and law and policy. In each session, participants examined the scope and potential impact of deepfakes on the upcoming election period, identified adverse effects, and discussed potential actions that various stakeholders could take to prevent such adverse effects.

This report highlights four themes that emerged from the discussions and includes supplementary information from other key work that has been done around synthetic media. | DOWNLOAD [pdf]

An associated report, written by the Center for an Informed Public’s Stephen Prochaska, Michael Grass and Jevin West, goes into greater detail on these four themes and two others. | DOWNLOAD [pdf]

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On Sept. 1, 2020, the Center for an Informed Public and Microsoft’s Defending Democracy Program convened a panel of experts that combined perspectives from technology, journalism, and civil society to explain what deepfakes are, why we should care about them, and what individuals can do to counter their impact.

Watch a recording of the full event, moderated by Laura Ellis, Head of Technology Forecasting, BBC and featuring Nina Schick, Political Broadcaster and Author; Corin Faife, Senior Program Coordinator, Emerging Opportunities & Threats, WITNESS; and Ashish Jaiman, Director of Technical Operations, Microsoft.