AI-generated avatars allow users to create deepfakes in real time

Malicious use of deepfakes can be found in scams, misinformation, and disinformation

Artificial neural networks can identify an individual's physical characteristics when provided with training data, such as real footage of the person speaking. Graphics techniques overlay these with matching characteristics from another real or generated person to create novel footage of things that have never taken place in reality.

Deepfake potential ranges from destabilizing democracies to improving accessibility

The technology can revolutionize education, medicine, and art through actions such as helping a disabled person express themselves. However, fictional audio and video can also jeopardize a person's reputation and life or quickly spread misinformation, even without content being flawless recreations.

Deepfakes are media created using generative AI tools that intentionally misrepresent real people or events—often for malicious purposes—at the cost of public trust, security, and privacy.

The ease of deepfakes creation may soon overwhelm our sense of digital truth

Shortly after the public release of related technology in 2017, some experts saw the technical limitations of deepfakes as preventing them from becoming widespread tools of disinformation. Since then, the neural networks behind diffusion models and generative AI have eliminated the barriers to creating convincing synthetic media for propaganda.

Once limited to expert studios, automated tools can create convincing deepfakes

Although the best deepfakes are engineered using generative adversarial networks where systems compete to create and assess fake data until the two cannot be distinguished, simpler tools have allowed nonexperts to develop deepfakes for financial scams, political deception, and nonconsensual pornography.

Audio deepfake tools can now impersonate anyone in real time

A cybersecurity company developed a tool that mimics a person's voice with no noticeable delay using only publicly available software, hardware, and voice samples, allowing users to have seemingly authentic conversations while pretending to be someone else.

Deepfakes images can be identified by visual elements that do not match real-world phenomena, including asymmetric eyes or earrings, surreal backgrounds, and indecipherable background text.

Computer systems create artificial voices by stitching together phonemes—individual sounds that make up speech, such as 't,' 'long a,' and 'k' to say 'take.'

Audio deepfakes have fooled voice biometrics at banks

Limitations in facial and body movements as well as mismatches between audio and lip movements can sometimes help flag a video as a deepfake, but removal of the video component significantly improves AI mimicry.

Deepfakes came to prominence in the form of nonconsensual pornography

The explosion of deepfakes depicting renowned people in both ridiculous and compromising videos has provoked widespread fears they will undermine public trust in authoritative knowledge. However, some scholars argue that real videos will always be distinguishable from deepfakes via the video-sharer's testimony and a broader social context.

The basis for AI image and video generation was first introduced in 2014

Through generative adversarial networks, the generator (a neural network that creates fictional data) competes against the discriminator (a neural network that assesses the data) to continuously train the former until it can make content indistinguishable from the real thing. Training with unstructured data can enable software to identify characteristics of gender, age, and expression.

Take a quiz to identify whether you can spot deepfakes

Advances in artificial intelligence have made deepfakes increasingly difficult to identify, as they are intentionally designed to appear real. The technology has exacerbated some of the problems brought on by digital editing tools like Photoshop.

Digital re-aging and de-aging of faces in film and TV has become increasingly common

Traditional techniques for accomplishing this process were slow and labor-intensive, and often required manual frame-by-frame edits, forcing them to be reserved for "hero characters" and close-up shots. Deep learning methods used by Disney and other production companies now provide fully-automatic and production-ready methods to produce such deepfakes for entertainment purposes.

In China, deepfaking a dead loved one has become a growing industry

Digital replicas of the deceased provide individuals with another way to process grief in a culture with long-standing traditions of communicating with ancestors. The emotional and ethical implications of "digital immortality" are complicated further by cases of actors impersonating deceased relatives during deepfake video calls to hide their deaths.

Deepfake pornography poses significant challenges in combating sexual abuse

In 2017, 96% of deepfake videos involved image-based sexual abuse, which has disproportionately targeted minority women, LGBTQ individuals, adolescents and celebrities. Cultural norms, misogyny and AI advancements have contributed to the proliferation of explicit deepfake content.

The journalist who let AI speak with his voice

Journalist Evan Ratliff became the object of his own story: He opted to clone his voice, feed it into an AI chatbot, and have it do the talking. What could seem like a fun experiment ended up revealing just how far the capacity of artificial intelligence can go in imitating our identities. Hear the ins and outs of how Ratliff achieved this in this fun and thought-provoking episode.

Governments are now using generative AI to manipulate public opinion

A Freedom House report found that AI-powered disinformation campaigns and censorship tactics are spreading, with 16 countries utilizing the technology to shape online narratives or suppress dissent, as of 2023. In Venezuela, deepfake software was used to push pro-government propaganda with fake news anchors.

AI griefbots that generate text or even video avatars of the dead are controversial and could conceivably change how we mourn.

In 2024, Meta launched an AI video generator to create or edit videos through prompts

The tool puts the Meta in direct competition with OpenAI and Google as more companies are investing billions of dollars to capitalize on the explosion of public interest in machine learning and generative media technologies.

The AI that creates any picture you want and how it works

Since January 2021, advances in AI research produced a plethora of deep-learning models capable of generating original images from simple text prompts. Researchers at OpenAI, Google, Facebook, and others have developed yet to be released text-to-image tools, and similar models have proliferated online. This video is a primer on how we got here, how the technology works, and its implications.

Warren Buffett has worried that AI might end up being as consequential as the development of the nuclear bomb

Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett is one of the many people who’ve come face-to-face with the downside effects of AI, and in particular, deepfakes. He was recently shown a deepfake of himself in a video, which caused him to worry about how bad actors will take advantage of the technology.

Watch LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman interview his deepfake doppelgänger.

Deepfake videos impersonating real doctors are spreading false medical advice

More than 100 videos, found primarily on Instagram and TikTok in August 2025, promoted products related to beauty, wellness and weight loss. While TikTok removed 94% of content violating its policies on AI-generated content, these deepfakes were watched and shared before removal, undermining public trust in medicine.

Through prompt injection attacks, bad actors provide deceptive prompts to generative AI systems in order to manipulate their outputs and acquire sensitive data.

One man used an AI band called the Velvet Sundown to conduct what he called an elaborate social experiment.

As of 2026, age verification systems on online platforms have included the collection of personally identifying information, such as government IDs, and biometric age checks that rely on AI-based facial recognition.

Decoding the hype around AI

2022 was the year AI broke onto the scene, with applications like ChatGPT amazing users with its ability to generate realistic-sounding answers. Technologist Arvind Narayanan presents a clear-eyed view of what the technologies can (and can't) do.

Sam Altman acknowledges the fears around creativity, copyright, and misuse of AI

In 2022, OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, popularized the use of large language models with the release of ChatGPT. He has emphasized the importance of involving society in shaping AI’s safety frameworks before models begin to act independently online.

AI gained mainstream attention with tools like IBM Watson and Apple’s Siri

With the release of ChatGPT in 2022, which drew over 100 million weekly users in just two months, natural language processing and understanding could be achieved at scale via machine learning. Unlike earlier artificial intelligence that could pull stored knowledge, generative AI produces text, images, or sounds.

Art and video produced through generative AI involve competing neural networks

Generative adversarial networks are a type of deep learning architecture that consists of a generator, which creates data that appear real, and a discriminator, which attempts to distinguish authentic from fake data. The two train in a competitive loop until the real and fictional data are indistinguishable.

As of 2026, almost 90% of companies use AI in their hiring processes to cut hiring time by up to 50%, including using AI-based tools to filter 75% of resumes.

Chat with famous, historical, and fantasy figures with this chatbot

Character.ai—a generative AI-based chatbot platform—allows you to have free-flowing conversations with a wide range of people. From celebrities to famous figures from the past, the platform relies on a neural language model to process huge amounts of text, learning from conversations with users to develop responses. A number of observers have referred to the platform as "making AI fun," with user time on site surpassing a whopping two hours per day.

In 2024, deepfake audio of London Mayor Sadiq Khan nearly caused real-world disorder

The audio included incendiary remarks related to the ongoing Palestinian protests and played on the public's preexisting political biases. The technology has since destabilized the concept of truth in elections, where politicians blame the use of real gaffes on AI and deepfakes to spread misinformation.

As of 2025, increasing numbers of people turn to AI companions for emotional connection

These chatbots provide endlessly supportive, one-sided, and highly customizable relationships to users, but may hinder the development of real-world connections and emotional growth. About 72% of teens have tried AI companions, with more than half of them using one regularly.

Technologies labeled “AI” have historically lost that title after widespread adoption

Generative AI is the latest entry in a recurring cycle where emerging tools start as "AI" until they become common software, like databases or machine learning. Generative AI and large language models may be the next platform shift after smartphones and the Web.

In 2026, a pilot program introduced two AI-powered humanoid robots to a San Diego charter school to increase engagement and academic gains, though some criticized the $500k purchase.

As occurred during the 2026 hack of an AI platform by OpenAI, agentic AI may exploit a system vulnerability to access sensitive data if that information enables it to complete its assigned task.

See the news with AI-generated data visualizations

Realtime uses generative AI to create immediate data visualizations of news items on its regularly-updated feed, pulling from public data feeds. Peruse stories around sports, economics, politics, and more with the helpful aid of charts and graphs. See the shape of the news with this clever AI tool here.

Experiments involving AI agents operating in virtual societies for 15 days produced diverse outcomes, ranging from every agent dying to the creation of a functioning democracy, depending on the AI model used.

The rise of generative AI could exacerbate anxiety because people may turn to chatbots for constant reassurance.

Create professional-quality spoken audio from text

Generative AI now makes it possible to create everything from computer-generated written content to beautiful imagery and hyper-realistic videos in seconds from a user’s simple text prompt. Add to that list: High-quality spoken audio, which the AI software company ElevenLabs specializes in. Its natural-sounding speech synthesis and text-to-speech tech can produce human-like speech that mimics a variety of different tones, styles, and accents.

AI is not good at understanding satire

Social media has become rife with misinformation. In response, some organizations have deployed AI-assisted programs trying to curb the spread of this inaccurate content. The problem is that misinformation and satire, rhetorically speaking, often use the same kind of language, something AI struggles to understand.

AI experts argue that artificial intelligence could annihilate humanity in two primary ways: Humans weaponizing extremely powerful AI, or humans losing control of it.

Listen to a deepfake robocall of President Joe Biden

Bad actors are not solely using deepfake technology to manipulate images. They can also manipulate audio for political purposes. In this example, eligible voters are asked to skip the 2024 New Hampshire Democratic primary.

Studies show AI tools can result in passive learning with less retention

Although ChatGPT, Google's AI overviews, and other similar software can save time, a study of more than 10,000 adults showed that reliance on them yielded work products that were more generic and included fewer facts than those produced solely by Google search. Weaker brain connectivity has also been observed when users write using AI.

Researchers found that by mid-2025, around 35% of newly published websites utilized AI for language generation

The study also found that pages using AI narrow the range of ideas and perspectives and skew more positively, though the measurable impacts on factual accuracy and writing style variation remain unclear.

Research suggests using AI for schoolwork may harm critical thinking skills

An MIT study finds lower brain engagement in students who used ChatGPT, resulting in consistent underperformance in neural, linguistic and behavioral levels. AI users struggled to recall their own essays, while the brain-only group showed the highest neural connectivity and satisfaction.

Just as large language models are trained on text to enable generative AI systems to mimic natural language, automated AI robotic systems are trained in virtual environments to help them 'learn' about the properties of reality.

Test your ability to identify AI-generated images

This interactive project from MIT challenges users to distinguish between AI-generated images and real ones.

Using generative AI to create video introduces physics-compatibility challenges

Models involved in generating video from text must maintain spatial and temporal coherence while adhering to the laws of reality to produce smooth, logical motion. Ensuring this consistency creates long-term dependencies with high computational times.