Alibaba, Huawei seeking CAC approval for Deepfake product development

Recently, Huawei, Alibaba, and other Chinese tech giants requested permission from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), to develop deepfake materials. The CAC has reportedly received around 110 applications for such products. So, here, we will closely examine why companies are seeking approvals, CAC's regulations, and the opportunities in the development of deepfake technology in China.

Chinese Tech Giants and Deepfake

What actually is Deepfake?

The deepfake is a simulated media created using artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning techniques. It involves generating highly realistic fake content, such as videos, audio recordings, or images, where the likeness or voice of one person is convincingly replaced with that of another. Deepfake technology has advanced to a point where it can make it appear as though someone is saying or doing something they never did. Algorithms like Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Autoencoders, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), and Transformer Models are used to create deepfakes. Autoencoders, in particular, hold an essential role in this context. They enable feature learning, data representation, and preprocessing across a wide range of tasks and applications. It has two components involved; an encoder and a decoder. The encoder compresses the input data, capturing its important features in a compact form. Likewise, the decoder takes the compact representation from the encoder and attempts to recreate the original data from it. So using 2 autoencoders, one trained on the reference image, and the other on the target image, you can generate a deepfake. The encoded representation of the target is fed into the decoder of the reference, resulting in an output with the target's likeness but with the characteristics of the target image.

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