Published November 9, 2022
The Independent quoted Siwei Lyu, SUNY Empire Innovation Professor of computer science and engineering, in an article on the rise in deepfake videos targeting political figures ahead of the November midterms.
Lyu says more needs to be done to educate social media users. “Social media world is very biased, very polarized. People are living in their echo chambers. Everybody has confirmation bias, and we like to see evidence supporting our beliefs,” he said. “If everybody has a higher awareness [of] this type of media manipulation. If they know this is false, then that will prevent them from having such an impact.”
AFP also quoted Lyu in a fact-checking report that determined that an image depicting U.S. congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene making a Nazi salute and wearing a red Soviet Union t-shirt is false and digitally manipulated. Lyu said the image circulating online is too low quality and heavily compressed to fully analyze, but that it appears the face is the only region that has been changed in the photo.