Artificial intelligence, or AI, is now making the world go crazy. They’re trendy, they’re powerful, and they’re pretty impressive. Their capabilities are limitless. For one, you’ve got OpenAI’s ChatGPT that can do things from creative writing to providing you with a mac and cheese recipe when you don’t have dairy products. Then, you’ve got AI image-generating tools to let you be your favorite pop culture character. Then, you also have the deepfake technology.
Deepfake technology, simply called deepfakes, is a technology that uses a form of AI, that is, deep learning, to create images of fake events, hence the name.
VPN service provider ExpressVPN revealed data from the World Economic Forum that said as of 2019, only fewer than 15,000 deepfakes were detected over the Internet. Now, the number is in the millions. And it has been said that they are bound to increase at an annual rate of 900 percent! Brace for impact.
Are deepfakes helpful or disadvantageous for businesses? We will find out in this article.
Pros Of Deepfake Technology For Businesses
Some of the most popular and successful deepfakes are letting people experience a speech that former United States president John F. Kennedy, Jon Snow apologizing for the unsatisfactory ending of “Game of Thrones,” and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg bragging about having total control of billions of individuals’ stolen data.
Believe it or not, these things are available around. If deepfakes help businesses, how? Read on.
1. Deepfakes Are Low-Cost
Entrepreneurs can save lots of money on campaigns that use deepfakes since in-person actors are not needed. So what do marketers do? They buy a license to use an actor’s identity, use their previous digital recordings, insert the dialogue they want to showcase, and create a new video.
Deepfakes are helpful when businesses want to create ads. They don’t need to record a video from scratch; instead, they just use previous recordings to develop a new campaign. There’s also no need for reshoots. That’s the power of deepfake technology. Marketers on a tight budget who want to produce high-quality campaigns will love deepfakes.
2. They Help Create Better Omnichannel Campaigns
Omnichannel refers to a customer-centric approach wherein all channels are integrated. So the consumer has a consistent and unified experience, whether at a brick-and-mortar store, on a website, or using an app.
With deepfakes, you don’t need in-person actors, so entrepreneurs can easily repurpose content for these omnichannel campaigns even if they have little money.
Instead of repeatedly shooting the campaign for each of the various media, they can instead edit the video cuts to come up with the campaign. Or, they can create new synthetic dialogue for radio ads or podcasts. All is possible with deepfake technology.
3. They Pave The Way For Hyper-Personalization
Moreover, deepfake technology has ushered businesses toward an increase in hyper-personalization, or a way of creating targeted and custom experiences using AI, data, analytics, and automation.
With this, brands can offer their customers more relevant messaging and experiences depending on their personal preferences. Say the customers won’t buy a product until the ethnicity of the product’s model is also their ethnicity. Deepfake technology can literally change the skin tone of the model also so the customer can see how the product would appear on their skin color.
In turn, this technology helps brands reach a wider market. Also, deepfake technology makes creating videos in multiple languages possible without spending too much time in the video’s production.
Cons Of Deepfake Technology For Businesses
However, unfortunately, behind the advantages of deepfakes for businesses, the technology has been used for nefarious purposes. These include unscrupulous businesses using the technology to generate fake customer feedback and product reviews, which can lead to decreased trust from these consumers. Let’s take a closer look.
1. Deepfakes Can Lead To Decreased Trust From Consumers
You know that deepfakes can create fake videos and present them as real. That’s the loophole with deepfake technology. Generally, it is impossible for anybody to determine if the media is fake or real at first glance.
For entrepreneurs, using videos created via deepfake can violate consumer ethics if these consumers feel the campaign has manipulated them. For instance, if marketers use this technology to generate fake positive reviews, this is obviously unethical.
2. They Give Rise To More Scams
Deepfake technology has been connected to scams simply because this gives rise to scams.
For example, there was this German energy firm’s United Kingdom subsidiary that handed around nearly $250,000 to a Hungarian bank account after a scammer utilized deepfake to mimic the voice of the firm’s CEO.
That’s bad, and what’s more, manufacturers can abuse this technology to create fake customer testimonials or reviews of their products just to make these products appear more appealing than they actually are.
How Businesses Should Tackle Deepfake Technology
It is true that deepfake technology does terrible things when abused, but this form of AI is also proving helpful for businesses. For this reason, companies must take proactive measures to tackle this innovation.
Here are some of the things businesses can do:
- Businesses can train their staff, especially those responsible for payments, and explain the threats posed by deepfake technology and how they can be spotted.
- They can tighten their compliance procedures around payment authorization. For instance, they can require all payments to be requested on paper and in writing from business email accounts and never over the phone. There should also be multiparty authorization for payments with larger amounts and implementing a “no-exceptions” rule.
- Businesses may also consider investing in software that detects whether a material is created using deepfake technology.
- Lastly, they should be affiliated with insurance providers that cover losses from deepfake-based fraud, so they can offer this to any party that needs it.
Conclusion
Threatening as it may be, deepfake technology is here to stay and will continue to develop. In the business world, this innovation has both advantages and disadvantages, pros and cons.
While the challenge for businesses using this technology is ensuring they are still within the boundaries of ethics, deepfake content is promising for brands that want to utilize well whatever budget they have and reach a broader audience.
As long as businesses avoid creating malicious marketing campaigns, deepfake technology can help both the company and the consumer by creating an immersive and more personalized experience.
