By Pat Culverhouse
A recent arrest of a Bossier City man for a “Deepfake” incident has local law enforcement agencies doing deep dive research into the potentially dangerous Internet activity.
Rafael Valentine Jordan of Bossier City is the first person arrested in Louisiana on charges relating to Deepfaking. He was arrested in late November for child porn and days later, police found evidence that Jordan used deepfake technology to create 436 images of child pornography
Deepfake is Artificial Intelligence (AI) created images that can be digitally manipulated to insert a person’s likeness to that of another where it becomes almost impossible to tell the image is fake.
According to MPD Sgt. Jason Smith, Deepfake is illegal only if it is used in the commission of a crime such as using an image to create child pornography or pornography of a person over the age of 18 without that person’s consent.
“We haven’t seen anything like this in our work here, but we’re learning as much as we can to be prepared,” Smith said. “Louisiana just passed legislation making improper use of Deepfakes a criminal offense, and the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office was the first in the state to enforce it in the matter of child porn.”
Persons convicted of using Deepfake pornographic imaging of minors could serve from 10 to 30 years in prison; penalty for using adult images is not less than 10 and up to 30 years.
Smith, who heads the MPD criminal investigation division and often turns to technology in solving crimes, said individuals who are going to commit crimes can easily turn tech-related advances to their own purposes.
“Someone using Deepfake can have me riding a rocket ship and that’s a freedom of speech thing,” he explained. “But the law comes into effect when sexual images are being created by using AI. They can go to Facebook, pull a picture and use AI to create these sexual images. And they don’t have to be technologically savvy to do this.”
Deepfake using Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) can even be used to write a code for creating explicit images of children, Smith said. New laws on the issue were created to help determine whether the fake was being used for real purposes.
Various platforms can also produce a person’s life story, or obtain a superior essay on just about any subject, if a user can provide a few pieces of information, Smith said.
“You can ask it questions on just about every book online and ask it to write an essay on ‘Of Mice and Men.’ It can bust out a 10-page college level essay that cannot be picked up by cheating services,” Smith said.
Webster Parish Sheriff’s Office Major Dustin Reynolds, like Smith, keeps abreast of computer-generated crimes and is studying the Bossier Parish case.
“This is a new state law and we want to know exactly how to apply it if we have a similar case,” Reynolds said. “I haven’t seen anything of this nature (Deepfake) here, but we certainly want to be alert.”
Reynolds said attention is naturally being focused on Deepfakes because of its potential use in forms of pornography and sexual abuse. But, he said, there are other areas where individuals should be aware that negative consequences could exist.
“Deepfakes can also be used in hoaxes and bullying and in spreading false information about someone,” he said. “It’s hard to prove to the average user that these things are fake and lives can be ruined.”
Smith and Reynolds agree that catching individuals who are illegally Deepfaking is a difficult task. Many in the online communities that create, exchange and view the images operate on sites that are difficult to track.
“They’re hard to crack,” Smith said. “They operate on the dark web and it takes a lot of dedicated dudes and lots of time and money to catch people like that.”
“We’re going to learn all we can about how this works and keep in touch with other agencies to share information,” Reynolds said. “The people involved in this sort of thing, especially those who create child porn images, need to be stopped.”