1042 – The Good and The Bad: Tom talks Deep Fakes

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

Overview:
Tom Antion discusses deepfakes—AI-generated videos that alter or replace people’s faces and voices. He explains how the technology is advancing rapidly, can be used for both entertainment and deception, and shares tips on how to recognize them.
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🧠 Key Points:
• What Deepfakes Are:
Deepfakes use AI to manipulate videos and images—replacing faces, changing bodies, or altering voices. The technology’s quality is improving quickly but still requires significant computing power and expertise for high-end results.
• Positive Uses:
o Hollywood uses deepfake-style technology to de-age actors (e.g., Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones 2023).
o Can be used for comedy and entertainment (e.g., parody videos, memes, YouTube content).
o Potential to make money by creating viral, funny deepfakes that are obviously fake.
• Negative Uses & Risks:
o Can harm reputations or spread misinformation.
o Could be used to discredit business owners, celebrities, or politicians.
o Example: A politician (Hakeem Jeffries) reacted poorly to a mocking deepfake meme—Tom notes that overreacting can backfire and attract more ridicule.
• How to Spot Deepfakes (for now):
1. Face coloration mismatches (skin tones don’t align with neck or body).
2. Lighting inconsistencies (shadows don’t match the environment).
3. Blurry edges where the face meets the neck.
4. Mismatched sound or lip-sync errors.
5. Unnatural blinking—too frequent or too infrequent (normal is once every 2–10 seconds).
(Note: These signs are current; as AI improves, detection may become harder.)
• Ethical Reminder:
Be cautious with deepfakes that appear serious or manipulative—especially if they’re trying to influence opinions or promote products falsely.
• Educational Plug:
Tom promotes his online school (IMTCVA.org), automation book (screwthecommute.com/automatefree), and mentorship program (GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com), encouraging listeners to gain in-demand digital skills.
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💡 Takeaway:
Deepfakes are a double-edged sword—fun and profitable for entertainment, but dangerous when used deceptively. Stay skeptical of “too real” videos and use simple clues to spot them before believing or sharing.

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Episode 1042 – Deep Fakes
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 1042 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about deep fakes. Wow. Deep fakes. You see them all the time. Sometimes they're funny and sometimes they're too real and can be troublesome. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. Hope you didn't miss episode 1041. That was no bumper stickers. That was an idea of whether you should put your persona out of what you believe on certain issues to your business, public, and see if it helps you or hurts you. So it's, uh, makes you think about certain things you should do or you shouldn't do. But it's your decision what you want to do. All right, that was 1041. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to episode number. All right. Pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree, get version 3.0, because that's the latest version. And also check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org, certified to operate by the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia because it's distance learning and it's quality distance learning. And you will have a highly in-demand skill in as little as six months, and you won't be paying for your your education until you're 90 years old. In fact, I saw this comedian. He's 90 years old and he's funny as crap. And he said, one of his jokes was, yeah, I just got done paying my student loans off. So there you go. That doesn't happen when you're in my school.

[00:02:06] All right. So deep fakes. Well, what are they? Well, they're AI, that alters videos and replaces faces and can do bodies and all kinds of stuff. And the quality is improving like crazy. Now I'm going to give you a place where you can try to just play with it for fun. But at the current time, it takes a lot of time and money to do really good ones. And like I said, some are positive, some are negative. And in fact, some are both. Like for instance, Hollywood is using, uh, deepfakes, uh, the technology of deepfakes. Uh, for instance, to de-age people like Harrison Ford in the 2023 Indiana Jones movie made him look a lot younger. All right. So that was, uh, of course he agreed to it. And everybody's happy, right? But, Another. I think Disney or somebody is getting sued because they're using actors likenesses that are dead and with no royalties or anything to anybody, so they're getting sued over that. So it's a lot of pluses and minuses. I'm happy for you to use deepfakes for entertainment purposes. Some of the things are just hysterical. They're obviously fake for entertainment and be funny.

[00:03:32] Awesome, great. But some of them are being used to harm people by making them look like, you know, I'll tell you, you know, some of the things they do later, but so so it's like most things it can be used for good or bad. And I'm going to give you some ways to recognize currently I say currently because the technology is getting so good. If you listen to this six months from now, it might might be impossible to tell the difference unless you're a forensic analysis guy or girl or something, I don't know. All right, so how can these things be dangerous? Now, first of all, I'll back up a minute. If you're using this for entertainment, I'm all for it. You can make YouTube channels that get millions of views over this, make a lot of money on it, and not cause any trouble or obviously be be fraudulent by making deep fakes. So if you're into that kind of stuff, yeah, go for it to do it. Well, currently takes a lot of computing power and knowledge and so forth. But you can you can pay people to do this too. All right. But on the downside, it can be very dangerous because I mean, even for you, people can show you saying or doing something to discredit you. Maybe it's a business competitor, maybe it's politicians and stuff. And this is one thing where some of these, you know, I'm still contemplating rolling out my my thing.

[00:05:06] Highly educated idiots. This Hakeem Jeffries guy. He's a second in charge. I forget if it's House or Senate, I forget, but. So somebody probably Trump trolled him with a a thing with a sombrero and a fake mustache. And instead of laughing it off, they made a big. And I'm not even sure what the purpose was for. It could have been like, you're sleeping at the wheel on on doing this continuing resolution and voting. I don't really know what it was for, but the immediate reaction of this one little stupid deepfake meme basically was screaming about it, making a big deal about it. That is the dumbest thing. These politicians are so stupid. I mean, making the big deal about it just generated hundreds of other ones all right. So. So if you when you don't have a sense of humor, people will just nail you to the wall. And so I'm laughing my butt off because I'm seeing these things over and over again. Different ones, super high quality and using the same theme, the sombrero thing. So again, I don't even know what it's about, but I'm thinking of it as a from the perspective of somebody attacks you in a, in supposedly a funny way, laughing it off is usually better than making a big deal and crying about it because it just I mean, he's in worse shape now than those people stuck on Mount Everest.

[00:06:51] You know, those hikers are up there stuck in a blizzard. Just they just keep coming. You just can't take a joke. All right? So if you want to play with this technology, and then I'll tell you how to recognize, you know, some ways currently you can try to recognize a deepfake. Now if it's funny and obviously, you know, crazy, then you don't have to bother with any of these things. But if it's something that appears serious, you might want to look at it a little closer. But anyway, if you want to play with this, there's an app called Face Swap and you can have fun with it. It's not going to be super high quality, but it still could be a lot of fun. All right. But here's some ways that you can check for uh, for deepfakes. And there's just a list of them here. Uh, one is the face coloration doesn't really match. Maybe the arms or other flesh or doesn't even closely resemble the scene that it's in. So face discoloration, it might be blurry a little bit, uh, where the face meets the neck. And people have been using this for, for hundreds years on pictures where they photoshopped some celebrity's face on some naked body or something, you know, that kind of stuff.

[00:08:15] But doing it in video is way more complicated. But where the face meets the neck might be a little weird. Let's say the lighting doesn't match. Maybe there's a big shadow on one place, and there should be the same shadow somewhere else, and it's not there. You know, those kinds of things. You really have to look close on these things. Maybe the sounds don't match up. See, on funny ones, on purpose, the sound might sound like chipmunks or something. Who knows, you know. But. But the sounds that don't match up. And then here's a really specific one that I was reading about, is that a normal person blinks their eyes once every two to 10 seconds. That's just a big average. And for some reason, and currently in the deep fakes, people are blinking either way, more or way less. And so it's suggested that you, you see, you know, go for 10s or 20s and see how many eye blinks there are. And if it's really outside of what a normal human does, then that could be a deepfake. Right. And then none of these not I don't think any one of these can say for sure if something is a deepfake. But this kind of scrutiny is really only important on ones that are trying to hurt somebody else, or trying to be fraudulent, or trying to to do testimonials, fake testimonials for an inferior product.

[00:09:53] That's when you really want to dig in and look closely on this stuff. But for the entertainment ones, I just look at them as fun. I mean, both sides of the political aisle are doing it. Uh, nobody's got any kind of, uh, lock on this, but but some of them are just hysterical. So anyway, that's a little bit about deepfakes. It can be used for good or bad. You can make a lot of money if you decide to jump into this and make funny ones and get loads of views and get them to go viral and get millions of views and so forth. So that's a way to make money with it. But on the other side is I want you to be more critical when you see one, if it's something that's going to influence you to do something or to not do something. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Check out my school IMTCVA.org and you get a scholarship to the school. If you're in my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and you can gift it to someone in your life you love, and you want to give them a legacy gift that's going to pay them off for years to come. Uh, it would be a great thing. All right, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.