Corporate strategy: How organisations can respond to deep fakes

A deep fake is a video of a person in which their face or body is digitally altered using artificial intelligence to make it appear like it is someone else. Deep fake videos have been on the increase. In 2019, deep fake videos increased by 300 percent in six months.

Deep fakes carry a lot of risk due to their deceptive nature. In the past, they have been used to manipulate public opinion in a negative way. In the political arena, deep fakes have been used to manipulate the public opinion negatively.

A deep fake video is very difficult to prove and the general populace may lack the capacity to distinguish between an original and a fake video.

Deep fakes have also been misused to propagate corporate fraud as was evident when a finance officer unknowingly transferred $25 million when fraudsters cloned the voice of the CEO through a deep fake call and gave him instructions to transfer the money. The company made a big loss through this corporate fraud.

From research, it has been established that up to 96 percent of deep fakes were used in non-consensual pornography. The impact of this on the victims is enormous. One victim whose image was used in a deep fake video suffered a lot of emotional, mental and psychological damage, as the creator of the deep fake was her friend. Deep fakes cause a lot of reputational damage.

Despite the negative use of deep fakes, there is a possibility of using deep fakes positively.

Deep fakes are not necessarily illegal though illegality comes in, depending on the manner and motive for which the videos are made.

Deep fakes are based on certain technologies which initially were made for good use.

Read: Digital manipulation: Why deepfakes pose a major risk to the public

Deep fakes can be applied by organisations to aid corporate strategy in certain ways. One way deep fakes can be used in organisations is through creation of learning videos or through customer care videos.

A corporate leader can use a deep fake video to pass on internal communication to his staff, for example communication on strategic plans and so on. Customers can also receive customer experience videos using deep fakes, where the images and audios of existing customer staff are used to create these videos.

The benefit of this is that it saves the organisation a lot of time taken in creating content and videos.

Deep fakes can be used to create positive impact messages. A good example of how a deep fake video was used to spread a positive impact happened when a deep fake video on gun controls in the US was made, featuring Joaquin Oliver, a Parklands shooting victim.

The victim was killed in the shooting but his parents and a media house created a deep fake video for good purposes.

Media houses can attain a competitive advantage by creating deep fake images as long as the consents of the individuals being featured is sought. It is also important to remunerate them.

Therefore, a deep fake can be used to make a high end video which features a celebrity. It may be cheaper and faster to create such a video using a deep fake.

The most important thing for the creator to note, is that before creation of the deep fake, consent must be given in writing, so as to minimise legal risk.

It is time for businesses to have policies to regulate artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies so as to minimise risk.

Ms Mputhia is founder of C Mputhia Advocates. Email: [email protected]