Donald Trump and Taylor Swift are some of the most deepfaked people of 2024, according to a study.
In new research, online image and video editing tool Kapwing set out to identify the influential public figures most commonly targeted by deepfake creators in 2024.
To do this, Kapwing analyzed thousands of requests on Discord’s most active free text-to-video AI tool, manually counting the number of prompts for 500 influential public figures in American culture.
Donald Trump leads as the most deepfaked celebrity of the year. There have been 12,384 deepfake videos created depicting him in 2024 — far more than any other person in the study.
At 12,384 deepfakes, a video of Trump is nearly 110 times more likely to be fake than those of Kamala Harris (113 videos), according to Kapwing.
Elon Musk is the second most deepfaked celebrity, according to the study. Musk, who just recently shared an AI generated video of Kamala Harris on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter), has been the target of nearly 10,000 deepfake videos.
Taylor Swift is the third-most deepfaked person overall with 8,202 videos in total. The revelation comes after U.S. senators introduced a bill that would criminalize the spread of nonconsensual deepfake porn — in direct response to the sexually explicit AI-generated photos of Taylor Swift that went viral this year.
President Joe Biden comes next with 7,956 deepfake videos. Actor Tom Cruise, soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg are also featured in the top ten of the most deepfaked celebrities of 2024.
Deepfake Videos are Mainstream
With the looming U.S. presidential election next month, Kapwing did the study as part of their deepfake awareness campaign. The company wants to educate the public on the possibilities and potential dangers surrounding deepfake technology.
“Our goal with this study is to bring hard data to the conversation about the potential dangers surrounding deepfake technology — we want to show how pervasive this technology already is, especially with the U.S. presidential election fast approaching,” Eric Lu, co-founder at Kapwing, says.
Kapwing says that its study found that video deepfakes have already gone mainstream. The company gave some tips for identifying deepfake videos.
“Detecting deepfakes in September 2024 involves paying close attention to both the audio and the video,” Lu explains.
“My top three tips are looking for a blurry mouth area or inconsistent movement of the teeth, watching out for unnatural blinking or lack of blinking, and listening for monotone voices and unnatural breathing patterns,”
For more information on the study, go to Kapwing’s website.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos and center image by Kapwing.
