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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Alex Hern UK technology editor

‘Time is running out’: can a future of undetectable deepfakes be avoided?

A human face with eyes shut and computer-generated lines over the top showing biometric identification.
Generative AI content is outpacing the human eye and finding and removing it automatically is hard. Photograph: Maria Korneeva/Getty Images

With more than 4,000 shares, 20,000 comments, and 100,000 reactions on Facebook, the photo of the elderly woman, sitting behind her homemade 122nd birthday cake, has unquestionably gone viral. “I started decorating cakes from five years old,” the caption reads, “and I can’t wait to grow my baking journey.”

The picture is also unquestionably fake. If the curious candles – one seems to float in the air, attached to nothing – or the weird amorphous blobs on the cake in the foreground didn’t give it away, then the fact the celebrant would be the oldest person in the world by almost five years should.

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