- 377 participants viewed a series of the same 6 news stories, 2 of which were fake and 4 that were true.
- The first fake news story discussed Jim Carrey being cast as the protagonist in a remake of "The Shining," while the second fake news story discussed comments that Barack Obama had made about Donald Trump; both stories were either presented as just text, alongside a YouTube clip of a deepfake video, or accompanied by an image of the subject of the story.
- After viewing the news stories, participants were asked to choose from a series of responses that best matched how much they remembered previously hearing about the event.
- At the end of the study, participants were informed that some of the stories they had been shown were fake, and were asked to select which stories they thought they were fake.
- Participants were then asked if they were familiar with deepfake videos, then were asked to identify the deepfake videos used in the study. They were then asked to evaluate, on a scale of 1 to 7, how dangerous deepfake videos are, how ethical they are, and how much they should be regulated.

Experiment 1 in "Deepfake False Memories" Study

- 305 participants viewed a series of the same 3 news stories, 2 of which were fake and one of which was true.
- The first fake news story was about a made-up video of Kim Kardashian rapping about her wealth, while the second fake news story was about "comments made by Kardashian about her online marketing." Both stories were presented with just text, or with an image of Kardashian or a clip of a deepfake video.
- Participants were again asked to choose from a series of responses that best aligned with how well they remembered previously hearing about the event.
- After being informed that some of the stories they had been shown were fake, participants were asked to rate the truthfulness of each story.
- After being told which videos were deepfakes, participants were asked how realistic each video was, and how much they thought people would believe the deepfakes were real.

Experiment 2 in "Deepfake False Memories" Study

- Could prior exposure and knowledge of deep fake videos aid in identifying fabricated videos?
- How do attitudes towards deep fakes, along with the ability to identify them, change when presented with a wider variety of deep fake videos?
- How do factors such as the plausibility of the story presented in a deep fake video, along with the credibility of the source, interact to influence a person's belief in a deep fake video?
- How does repeated exposure to deep fake videos within different context influence how readily someone believes the information presented by them?

Possible Areas of Further Research Related to "Deepfake False Memories" Study

To examine whether deepfake videos have the ability to distort our memories of an event by presenting participants with a fake news story in the format of "misleading text, misleading text with photograph, or misleading text with a deepfake video." Participants were also evaluated on their ability to detect fake stories after reading a post-exposure warning.

Johns Hopkins University

Doctored videos that serve as evidence for events that never actually occurred; created using machine learning techniques or artificial intelligence.

Deepfake Videos

Gillian Murphy & Emma Flynn (2021): Deepfake false memories, Memory, DOI:10.1080/09658211.2021.1919715

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