Is Ramesh Jarkiholi sex video a 'deepfake'?

Minister says video that cost him his job is fake. How easy is it to doctor footage?

Actor Kate McKinnon (left) appears on an American TV show in comedy sketches, where she plays Hillary Clinton. YouTube channel Derpfake took a clip from the show, transposed Hillary's face on it, and uploaded it with full disclosure.

Ramesh Jarkiholi, the Karnataka minister who lost his job on Wednesday after TV channels aired intimate footage featuring him and a woman, insists the video is doctored.

He says he neither knows the woman, nor the activist who took the video to the police. Metrolife asked experts about the possibility of video manipulation.

Colloquially, a video manipulated with the help of archived visual and auditory data is known as a deepfake.

“The term refers to videos where one person’s face is transposed onto another’s. The technology can also be used to change what someone is saying. A true deepfake is made through machine learning,” says independent security researcher Karan Saini. Computers are fed data about a person’s gestures, mannerisms and voice inflections, and these are eventually used to create fake footage.

Morphing someone’s face onto a video and creating deepfakes is entirely achievable in today’s world.

With the necessary software, a skilled editor can do it convincingly, he says.

“It’s a tedious process, but it can be done,” says Suresh Kandy, videographer and editing expert.

Anyone who is tech-savvy can create fake videos on a home computer, but these can easily be detected as they have visual glitching.

Cloud companies allow people to rent resources for creating deepfake imagery, but most only allow creation of ‘safe for work’ content, Saini explains.

How to spot a deepfake? Yes, close observation can often show whether a video is doctored.

“Facial features usually have irregularities around the mouth and ears. There may be odd light and reflection patterns,” Saini says.

The Jarkiholi video looks like it was recorded on a mobile phone. It is not easy to morph phone footage. You need the best experts in the country to accomplish that, Kandy says.

Saini says sometimes the quality of a video is lowered to mask a deepfake.

A deepfake is not the only way to create a manipulated video though.

“If it’s a short video, editing images from each frame of the video is possible,” he says.

Low tech fake

The easiest way to create a fake video is to hire a lookalike and a makeup artist, and then to doctor the video with help from a neural (archival) network. The Jarkiholi video is low in quality. Sometimes, that allows for easier manipulation, says Saini.

Celebrity porn

Deepfake porn, especially those featuring movie stars, is out there in abundance on the Net.

Initially, deepfake technology was used to create morphed pornographic content featuring celebrities, but the technology is increasingly gaining popularity in the business and entertainment sectors.

The biggest fear is that the technology can be used to spread incorrect information, especially in politics.

Sleuths mum

Metrolife contacted the Karnataka State Forensic Science Laboratory for its opinion, but an official refused to comment on the authenticity of the video.