25.09.2024

Decent deepfakes? New paper on professional deepfake developers’ ethical considerations

Who is behind the rise of deepfakes? What do the software engineers, developers and companies behind the tech believe in? How aware are they of deepfakes' multifaceted impact? And what role does (AI) ethics, if any, play in their everyday work? These questions lie at the core of a new paper published by Maria Pawelec in the journal AI and Ethics.

Deepfakes are threatening the foundations of democracy and the integrity of democratic elections. Sexualizing deepfakes are a growing threat to women and children worldwide; deepfake-based cybercrime is on the rise. At the same time, we are seeing incredible uses of the ever-improving technology for good and the benign, including deepfakes for entertainment, memes, marketing and Hollywood, but also deepfakes supporting causes like Ukraine in its defence against Russia, as well as contentious uses such as "softfakes" in election campaigns worldwide.

But who is behind the rapid development of the tech over the last few years? Who are the software engineers, developers, and companies that are driving the AI forward or making deepfakes tools available to the broader public? What do they believe in? How aware are they of deepfakes' multifaceted implications, and what role does ethics, including AIethics, play in their everyday work? These underresearched questions lie at the core of a new interview-based open access research paper by Maria Pawelec published in the journal "AI and Ethics": Link.