In this era of digitalization, where almost everything is digital and every person wanting their task to be done instantly or swiftly. Due to technological advancements, more and more inventions are taking place across the past decade, everything has become just a click away! People can order food, clothes, groceries and what not from any part of the world with the medium of internet and technology from the convenience of their house.

But everything has its own advantages and disadvantages, because of this excessive use of internet, people has devised their method to deceive others who are rather nave with the subject of internet and such advanced technology and such elements are being robbed off their assets as they tend to believe whatever is there on the internet is true. With the development in technology, there has been a sudden surge in the number of hackers and scams over the internet that has led to an increase in the rate of cyber crime across the globe.

AI, or artificial intelligence is a technological technique wherein it becomes possible for computer to mimic intelligence and problem-solving skills. Deepfakes are like a branch of artificial intelligence in which a photo or a video is convincingly altered to impersonate real people or things as to make them do things which they wouldn't do in reality. It includes manipulating facial expressions and speech patterns to generate entirely fictional video footage, deep fakes represent a new frontier of disinformation.

Deep Fakes: How And What?

Deep Fakes is a synthetic media, including audio, video and images, generated by artificial intelligence technology that portray something that does not exist in reality or have never occurred.

The term deepfake combines deep, taken from AI deep-learning technology (a type of machine learning that involves multiple levels of processing), and fake, addressing that the content is not real. The term came to be used for synthetic media in 2017 when a reddit moderator created a subreddit called "deepfakes" and began posting videos that used face-swapping technology to insert celebrities' likenesses into existing pornography videos.

Deepfakes are produced using two different AI deep-learning algorithms: one that creates the best possible replica of a real image or video and another that detects whether the replica is fake and, if it is, reports on the differences between it and the original. The first algorithm produces a synthetic image and receives feedback on it from the second algorithm and then adjusts it to make it appear more real; the process is repeated as many times as it takes until the second algorithm does not detect any false imagery.

Deepfakes are, more often than not, associated with nefarious motives, including creating misinformation and generating confusion about politically important matters. They have been used to demean, intimidate, and harass and have targeted not only celebrities, politicians, and CEOs, but ordinary citizens as well.

Laws Regarding Deepfakes Around The World & India

China has established provisions for deepfake providers, in effect as of 10th, January, 2023, through cyberspace administration of China. This provision requires companies and people that uses deep synthesis to create, duplicate, publish, or transfer information to obtain consent, verify identities, register records with the government, report illegal deep fakes and offer recourse mechanisms. In Canada, there is a three prolonged strategy that includes prevention, detection and response. Canadian government work in favour of spreading legal awareness and developing their prevention technology as to tackle this problem of illegal deepfakes.

Existing Canadian law that bans the distribution of nonconsensual disclosure of intimate images. The EU has proposed laws, Code of Practice on Disinformation addresses deepfakes through fines of up to 6 percent of the global violators. Also, has the backing of Digital Services Act, which came into force in November 2022, increases the monitoring of various platforms for various kinds of misuse. South Korea was one of the first countries to invest in AI research and development, as they made an investment of 1 trillion won over 5 years.

South Korea makes it illegal to distribute deepfakes which causes damages to public interests, with offender being liable to 5 years of imprisonment or fine up to 50 million won. In the US, on the federal level, the DEEP FAKE Accountability Act was introduced in 2019, seeks to require deep fakes creators to disclose their use, prevent distribution of deep fakes intended to deceive its viewers during an election or harm the reputation of an individual and set potential fines and imprisonment terms for the violators.

In India, there are section 66D and section 66E of the Information Technology Act, 2000 which penalises a person with imprisonment and a fine, who cheats by impersonating an individual and/or publishes or transmits images of a private area absent content in an electronic form. Sections 67, 67A and 67B of the IT Act prohibit and punish those who publish or transmit obscene or sexually explicit material. These provisions, however, are not enough to address the larger problem, how to identify and prevent the circulation of abusive deep faked content. On 7 November 2023, the Union issued an advisory to social media intermediaries ("SMIs") to identify and action, inter alia, deep faked content.

The union advised SMIs to ensure due diligence is exercised and reasonable efforts are made to identify misinformation and deepfakes, such cases are expeditiously actioned against and access is disabled well within applicable timelines under the IT Rules, 2021and any such content, when reported, is removed within 36 hours of the report: SMI's failure to act in this regard would attract Rule 7 of the Information Technology Rules (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics) Code, 2021 by way of which they could be charged with offences under the Indian Penal Code.

Subsequently, on 27 November 2023, the Union announced its plans to draft new regulations and amend existing laws to combat the creation and spread of deep faked content. Section 57 of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957 provides that copyright protection against unauthorized use of works, allowing copyright owners to take legal action.

In global context, Bletchley declaration signed by 28 nations work together in an inclusive manner to ensure human-centric, trustworthy and responsible AI that is safe, and supports the good of all through existing international fora and other relevant initiatives, to promote cooperation to address the broad range of risks posed by AI.

Challenges Ahead

• Non-consensual Pornography: It accounts for 96 percent of deepfakes currently deployed on the internet. Most targets are celebrities, but there are an increasing number of reports of deepfakes being used to create fake revenge porn. This can cause harm to the reputation of the individual and may drive that person into depression or various other mental health problems.
   
• Extortion and Identity Fraud: Corporations worry about the role deepfakes play in supercharging scams. There have been unconfirmed reports of deepfake audios being used in CEO scams to swindle employees into sending money to fraudsters. Deepfakes could also be used to make fraudulent online payments and hack into personal banking services. Voice cloning is a method used by fraudsters to mimic individuals, which is then used to deceive others to gain material benefits.
   
• Electoral Deepfakes: Fraudsters can deliberately create deepfakes to alter the speeches of politicians and influence public opinion regarding a particular candidate. Unchecked use in campaigns can destabilize democracies.

Measures That Can Be Taken As Protection Against Deepfakes

Deep trace takes the approach championed by WITNESS Program Director Samuel Gregory: Don't panic. Prepare. Consider using semantic passwords for conversations, or a secret question you ask or answer at the start of a call. If you have a voice authentication service or biometric security features, ask those providers whether their tools are up to date. Educate your employees. Explain deepfake attacks might become more frequent and there is no magic formula for detecting them. Making technology more advanced so that such deep fakes can be detected at their nascent stages and can be pushed down at that given stage.

Law making bodies have to introduce better rules and regulations which can put a limitation on deep fakes and safeguard the citizens and popular figures from being bullied and harassed. Government should work swiftly as to safeguard the right and dignity of the citizens and should towards passing certain bills which will provide its citizens with certain protection from these kinds of cyber-crimes.

Another way can be through education, as the government or responsible bodies/departments should introduce certain legal awareness drives, they can also certain presentation and outreach programmes in NGOs, schools, colleges and slums and provide them with awareness regarding ongoing digital threats and educate about the ways through which they can safeguard themselves.

Make sure that it includes how to tell a fake from a real deal. In a webinar, Raymond Lee, the CEO of FakeNet.AI and senior director of security strategy at Cato Networks, explained that facial features are very difficult to perfect, especially the eyes. If the eyes look unnatural or the movement of facial features seem to be off, chances are good that it is an altered image.

Conclusion:
In this age of digitalization where almost everything is present online and is just a click away, it is important to note that everything has its merits and demerits and its up to the individual as to how they choose to use it. Internet and technology can be used to serve legal awareness and towards welfare of the individuals and can also be used to extort, harass other innocents over the platform. Thus, it becomes important for the individuals to know how they can save themselves from such cyber-crimes and protect their dignity and reputation. Government should work towards the protection of rights and dignity which is guaranteed to them in the constitution.

Public awareness campaigns by government and media are vital to inoculate citizens against deepfake risks. Media literacy education especially for youth can create informed, critical digital citizens. Fact-checking networks and cybersecurity need enhancement to counter disinformation threats.

It becomes a need of the hour to pass certain regulation according to the dynamic state of affairs with the help of the necessary stakeholders introducing their valuable insights onto the upcoming issue of deep fakes. It is important optimize deep fakes while mitigating its negative factors to certain extend.

Also Read:

• The Deepfake Enigma Vis-a-Vis Indian Copyright Laws
• Deepfakes And Online Defamations: A Looming Threat To Identity And Reputation