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As the US gears up for the 2024 presidential election next month, Donald Trump and his outspoken supporter Elon Musk are the most frequently deepfaked public figures, according to new research by video content platform Kapwing.
The study tracked deepfake video requests using a popular text-to-video AI tool. It found that 64% of the deepfaked videos of the top ten most deepfaked figures were of politicians and business leaders.
Donald Trump, the former president and current Republican candidate, topped the list with 12,384 deepfake videos. He was followed closely by CEO of Tesla and X (formerly Twitter) Elon Musk, with over 9500 deepfakes.
Current US President Joe Biden and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also made the top ten.
What are deepfake videos?
Deepfake videos use AI to superimpose one person’s appearance onto another’s, producing fake content that gives the illusion of people saying or doing things they never actually did.
These videos, enhanced by GenAI, are becoming more and more convincing and challenging to identify, posing significant risks to public trust.
The threat of deepfakes to democracy
The prominence of Musk and Trump as deepfake targets underscores the growing risk this technology poses to business leaders and politicians alike, particularly with the 2024 US election just around the corner.
Eric Lu, co-founder of Kapwing, who conducted the study, says: “Our goal with this study is to bring hard data to the conversation about the potential dangers surrounding deepfake technology.”
According to Lu, deepfakes could be weaponised to spread misinformation, influence public opinion, or even deceive voters.
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