When mothers say “I would do anything for my child”, they aren’t usually talking about using deepfake for nefarious purposes – but that’s exactly what one U.S. mom decided was necessary.
Raffaela Spone’s daughter was a member of the Victory Vipers, her high school’s cheerleading team. After she had an apparent falling-out with three teammates, her devoted mother allegedly decided to take action – and the other cheerleaders’ parents say that she went way beyond just starting nasty rumors. Just to be clear, it’s believed that Mrs. Spone’s daughter was unaware of her mother’s activities during the months in which they were allegedly taking place.
Mrs. Spone almost certainly knew that underage smoking and drinking would have resulted in participants getting kicked off the team; this was supposedly her goal in fabricating evidence against the three cheerleaders. This “evidence” included both photos and videos of what seemed to be her daughter’s ex-friends, who were nude, smoking, and drinking. The content was sent to the team’s coach, which supports the allegations that it was done to get certain cheerleaders banned from the team.
For several months, the three cheerleaders were receiving harassing and abusive text messages sent from an unidentified number. It later came to light that in addition to the three victims, abusive messages had been sent to the girls’ parents, and to the gym owners where the cheerleaders practiced – all from fake numbers. It’s thought that Mrs. Spone was able to generate the images and videos with the help of photos that the girls had posted on their social media accounts – a job that’s fairly easy thanks to technological advances in artificial intelligence.
While the story told by the deepfakes eventually unraveled, it was the texts that initially led authorities to the source of the problem. First, they traced the texts to a website that offers phone numbers for sale, generally used by telemarketers. The data from that purchase allowed police to track the IP address directly to Mrs. Spone, after which she was arrested and charged with several counts of harassment.
This case would be remarkable even if you just considered the vindictiveness shown towards the victims, but it gets even more so when deepfake is added to the mix. Until now, deepfake was primarily used for entertainment purposes – whatever the content creator had in mind. It could be a 30-second YouTube clip in which “Chuck Norris” describes how much he loves knitting potholders for his neighbors, or for content on adult entertainment sites.
However, this is one of the first instances in which deepfake has been used for allegedly criminal purposes – and it probably won’t be the last. How can you even tell whether or not a deepfake was used? Was it live porn or was it
fabricated by a computer user? It’s difficult, but experts say that it can be done. In fact, scientists have unveiled a tool which analyses light reflections in the person’s eyes. If the tool can tell that the reflections don’t check out, the video or picture is determined to be generated using deepfake.