Accepted: Project on Deepfakes | Joint Initiative for Digital Citizen Research | Canadian Heritage and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

Today, disinformation and online propaganda are more misleading and manipulative than ever. Their spread on social media platforms is far from being contained, let alone stopped.

Deepfakes are a particular form of disinformation that leverages machine-learning algorithms to create audio and video of real people saying and doing things they never said or did. They risk soon to undermine our perceptions of what the truth is and threaten democracy. The technology is moving so quickly toward being indistinguishable from reality that it is posing alarming risks to the legitimacy of online information. Further, the potential deepfake detection solutions, no matter how good they get, will not prevent every single deepfake from getting circulated. Meanwhile, youth are increasingly exposed to deepfakes and educators are striving to find ways to help youth develop an eagle eye for disinformation.