A deepfake is synthetic media that convincingly impersonates a real person: face-swapped video, cloned voice, fabricated imagery. Generation quality crossed the
Synthetic media that convincingly impersonates a real person: face-swapped video, cloned voice, or fabricated imagery. Generation quality crossed the casual-detection threshold years ago, so 2026 incidents center on fraud, disinformation, and harassment.
Defense is layered: detection models, provenance standards like C2PA watermarking, platform labeling rules, and, most practically, out-of-band verification norms for any high-stakes request that arrives as media, such as a voice-cloned executive authorizing a transfer.