Deepfake

A deepfake is highly realistic synthetic or manipulated media that depicts a person, voice, event, or action in a materially false way.

Plan for this page

Understand one concept in plain language and connect it to nearby ideas.

You will leave with: Deepfakes are often created with learned generative methods and can be used for satire, art, accessibility, fraud, harassment, or political deception. Context, consent, labeling, and distribution determine much of the impact.
Time: 3–8 min
Before you begin: No prerequisite. Keep one real example in mind.
Do this now: Read the explanation, then compare the example with the common misunderstanding.

Prepared next stepPractice the synthetic-media evidence check

DeepfakeA deepfake is highly realistic synthetic or manipulated media that depicts a person, voice, event, or action in a materially false way.

Synthetic media
Misinformation
Verification

Plain explanation

Deepfakes are often created with learned generative methods and can be used for satire, art, accessibility, fraud, harassment, or political deception. Context, consent, labeling, and distribution determine much of the impact.

Example

A scammer generates a manager’s voice asking an employee to transfer money to a new account.

Why it matters

Seeing or hearing is no longer sufficient verification for consequential claims. Check origin, independent corroboration, known channels, context, and incentives before acting or sharing.

Common misunderstanding

Misconception: visual glitches reliably expose every deepfake. Correction: quality changes, compression creates false clues, and evidence must include provenance and corroboration.

Related concepts

Follow relationships, not only the alphabet

Synthetic mediaSynthetic media is text, imagery, audio, video, or other media created or materially altered by computational generation.MisinformationMisinformation is false, inaccurate, or materially misleading information shared regardless of whether the sharer intended to deceive.VerificationVerification is the process of checking whether a claim, output, action, identity, or result is adequately supported for its intended use.

Practice the synthetic-media evidence check

Sources and scope

What supports this object

Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework: Generative Artificial Intelligence ProfileU.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology

Covers impersonation, synthetic content, provenance and related risks; legal definitions and remedies vary by jurisdiction.

Open source

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