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1.媒體來源：Gizmodo

2.記者署名：ByShoshana Wodinsky

3.完整新聞標題：

Deepfakes Maybe Not Quite the Political Apocalypse We Feared, MIT Researchers
Find

麻省理工學院的研究人員發現，Deepfake所帶來的，可能並非我們所擔心的政治劫難那般

4.完整新聞內文:

Ever since we’ve seen deepfakes cropping up across porn, e-commerce, and
literal bank robberies, there’s always been concern that this same tech
could be used to interfere with future elections. Well, according to one new
study, that might be tougher than we thought. Researchers from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have put out a new report
investigating whether political video clips might be more persuasive than
their textual counterparts, and found the answer is... not really.



“Concerns about video-based political persuasion are prevalent in both
popular and academic circles, predicated on the assumption that video is more
compelling than text,” the researchers wrote in their paper. This is a point
we’ve heard again and again from lawmakers over the years, ever since
deepfakes first popped up on their radar in mid-2019. When Sens. Rob Portman
(R-OH) and Gary Peters (D-MI) introduced the Deepfake Taskforce Act this past
summer, Portman noted in a statement that deepfakes posed a “unique threat”
to national security.


Taskforce Act）時，Portman 便在聲明中指出，「Deepfake 已經對國家安全構成了『獨
特的威脅』」。

“For most of human history seeing meant believing, but now that is becoming
less and less true thanks to deepfakes,” Portman said at the time. “
Combined with the network effects created by social media, fake videos or
pictures can travel around the world in an instant, tricking citizens.”



To gauge how effective this tech would be at tricking anyone, the MIT team
conducted two sets of studies, involving close to 7,600 participants total
from around the U.S. Across both studies, these participants were split into
three different groups. In some cases, the first was asked to watch a
randomly selected “politically persuasive” political ad (you can see
examples of what they used here), or a popular political clip on covid-19
that was sourced from YouTube. The second group was given a transcription of
those randomly selected ads and clips, and the third group was given, well,
nothing at all since they were acting as the control group.



After that, each member of each group was given a questionnaire asking them
to rate the “believability” of the message they saw or read—specifically,
whether they believed the people in the clip actually made a particular
claim. Then they were asked to rate how much they disagreed with the core
point from whatever persuasive ad they were seeing.



The question these MIT researchers were trying to answer was twofold: Was
seeing actually believing, the way Portman (and countless others) have said?
And if it is, how much could someone’s opinion actually be swayed by video,
or by text?

MIT 的研究人員試圖回答兩個層次的問題：
人們看到什麼，就會真的相信什麼嗎（這也是 Portman和無數人的說法）？
如果上述假設為真，那人們的意見真的會因為影片或是文字而動搖嗎？

The result? “Overall, we find that individuals are more likely to believe an
event occurred when it is presented in video versus textual form,” the study
reads. In other words, the results confirmed that, yes, seeing was believing,
as far as the participants were concerned. But when the researchers dug into
the numbers around persuasion, the difference between the two mediums was
barely noticeable, if at all.



As one of the researchers behind the project, Adam Berinsky, noted in a
statement about the work, “[J]ust because video is more believable doesn’t
mean that it can change people’s minds.”

作為該計畫的研究人員之一，Adam Berinsky 指出「即使人們會去相信影片的內容，這也
不意味著影片的內容真的可以改變人們的想法。」

Of course, this study (like all academic studies) comes with a fair share of
caveats. For one, even though 7,600 people is a pretty large sample size, it
might not capture the full range of opinions that every American voter might
have. And as the researchers point out in their piece, the small persuasive
advantage that video has over text might actually be even smaller outside of
a research environment:



"In both of our studies, the text-based treatments were presented in the form
of a detailed transcript containing an exact replication of the audio output
as well as a comprehensive description of key visual cues. In reality,
politically persuasive writing may be structured quite differently (e.g., as
a news article or opinion piece)."



But even if that’s the case, the study notes that information presented over
video has a unique advantage that text simply doesn’t: A video is more
attention-grabbing and can capture more of an audience than a written report
ever could.

不過即使是這樣，該研究仍然指出，透過影片呈現的資訊，還是有相較於以文字為載體所
沒有的優勢：與單純的文章相比，影片可以吸引更多的受眾。

“It’s possible that in real life things are a bit different,” David Rand,
one of the other authors on the study, noted in a statement.

「在現實生活中，情況可能會有所不同」該研究的作者之一 David Rand 指出。

“It’s possible that as you’re scrolling through your newsfeed, video
captures your attention more than text would,” he added. “You might be more
likely to look at it. This doesn’t mean that video is inherently more
persuasive than text—just that it has the potential to reach a wider
audience.”



In other words: At least as far as this study is concerned, deepfake videos
of a given politician aren’t likely to sway people’s political views more
than a fake news report about that same politician. The only advantage that
video might have is whether you believe what you’re seeing in front of you—
and the number of eyeballs that clip might eventually get.

換句話說，至少就這項研究而言，政治人物的 Deepfake 影片不太可能比假新聞更能影響
人們的政治觀點。 影片可能具有的唯一優勢在於高點閱率，如此而已。



5.完整新聞連結 (或短網址):

https://gizmodo.com/deepfakes-maybe-not-quite-the-political-apocalypse-we-f-1848090462

https://tinyurl.com/3k7z56bv



6.備註:

簡單來說呢，要成立許多政治人物所說「Deepfake 可能被用於偽造政治宣傳或政策，導
致選民傻傻的相信這些錯誤資訊，很可怕！」的前提是

1. 人們真的會因為看到 Deepfake 影片，就去相信影片裡的政治人物有講過那些話。
2. 並且因為看了這些影片，進而改變自己的政治想法。



不過，撇除作為政治宣傳的工具，Deepfake 還是有性暴力、性騷擾以及詐欺的問題，這
些仍是該技術的隱憂之一。

對這研究有興趣的可以去啃 MIT 的論文：

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/47/e2114388118
https://psyarxiv.com/r5yun/

Wittenberg, Chloe, Ben M. Tappin, adam berinsky, and David G. Rand. 2020.
“The (minimal) Persuasive Advantage of Political Video over Text.”
PsyArXiv. February 19. doi:10.31234/osf.io/r5yun.


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