deepfake

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 8, 2023 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>deepfake</strong> &#149; \DEEP-fayk\&nbsp; &#149; <em>noun</em><br /> <p><em>Deepfake</em> refers to an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.</p> <p>// The leaked video incriminating the school's dean was discovered to be a <em>deepfake</em>.</p> <p><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deepfake">See the entry ></a></p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>"All sorts of <em>deepfakes</em> are possible. Face swaps, where the face of one person is replaced by another. Lip synchronization, where the mouth of a speaking person can be adjusted to an audio track that is different from the original. Voice cloning, where a voice is being 'copied' in order to use that voice to say things." — Julia Bayer and Ruben Bouwmeester, <em>DW.com</em>, 14 Jan. 2022 </p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p>The old <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/maxim">maxim</a> "things aren’t always as they seem" seems more true than ever in the age of deepfakes. A deepfake is an image, or a video or audio recording, that has been edited using an algorithm to replace the person in the original with someone else (especially a public figure) in a way that makes it look authentic. The <em>fake</em> in <em>deepfake</em> is transparent: deepfakes are not real. The <em>deep</em> is less self-explanatory: this half of the term is specifically influenced by <em>deep learning</em>—that is, machine learning using artificial <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/neural">neural</a> networks with multiple layers of <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/algorithm">algorithms</a>.</p> <br /><br /> </p> </font>