Yes, this is a photo of Dr Yuki Watanabe with a real bird (named Ted) on her shoulder.
An Otago researcher is part of an international collaboration working to protect democracy, identity, and business from deepfake AI.
Dr Yuki Watanabe is with Otago's Media, Film and Communications programme. She specialises in investigating the dynamic relationship between education, culture, and communication technology.
People are already scrambling to deal with the proliferation of text-based generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), she says.
Deepfakes, which are audio, images, and video edited or generated by AI are also a rapidly developing technology.
“People understand that text can be faked but with images ‘seeing is believing,’ and there can be some large consequences from this. This is going to require more sophisticated media literacy,” Yuki says.
Yuki is a project member of an international collaboration on ‘Deepfakes: an interdisciplinary approach to protect democracy, identity and business vulnerability.’
The initiative, led by Associate Professor in Digital Transformation and Advanced Data Analytics Dr Ronnie Das, University of Western Australia, has received Matariki Network Research Seed Funding for an initial two years.
It is compelling that the project brings together international experts across a range of disciplines, essential given the broad reach of rapidly developing AI, Yuki says.
“It really takes international and interdisciplinary collaboration to research new technology. It is necessary to focus on specific social cultural context, and at the same time it is very much global.”
Her part in this multidimensional project is assessing the current understanding of deepfake technology in an educational setting in Aotearoa. She will be working with secondary school media studies teachers to hear their thoughts, experiences, and any strategies they have.
“Media studies educators and students, at tertiary and secondary level need to be engaged and informed about the challenges and opportunities associated with this technology. Then we can go from there.”
Yuki is proud to be one of the members bringing a humanities presence to this project, she says.
She finds the people in the Matariki Network easy to communicate and collaborate with to get underway with seed funding, essential with the broad opportunities, risks, and fast-moving nature of AI developments.
This project brings together academics in business, data analysis, computer science, economics, and social justice. Participating research institutes include The Alan Turing Institute, the UWA Data Institute, the UWA Centre for Business Analytics, Social Media Research Foundation, and Audencia Business School France.
Yuki is seeing huge benefits in this multidimensional approach, she says.
“By collaborating, we can be informed about the technology side and the innovation.
“We can bring these ideas to secondary teachers, and eventually this project wants to develop education resources, and workshops to present to young people.”
The Matariki Network of Universities, of which the University of Otago is a founding member, is an international group of leading universities promoting excellence in research-led education.
~ Nā Antonia Wallace, Kaiarataki Pārokoroko Communications Advisor
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