White House says Joe Biden is a victim of ‘cheap fakes’: What are they?

Easily edited, and reliant on real videos, they’re less sophisticated than deepfakes — but very effective.

The White House on Monday hit back at critics who have cited recent videos of United States President Joe Biden to suggest he is mentally impaired and physically frail, less than six months before presidential elections in which he is expected to take on his predecessor Donald Trump.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre accused some of the videos of Biden, where he appears unresponsive or seems to be wandering off on his own, of being modified to create what are being described as “cheap fakes”.

So what are cheap fakes, is the 81-year-old Biden a victim, and how are they different from deepfakes?

The term “cheap fake” was created by Britt Paris and Joan Donovan, co-authors of Deepfakes and Cheap Fakes: The Manipulation of Audio and Visual Evidence.

Creators of cheap fakes take real source videos and manually edit them — changing what’s seen in them, and even removing parts that lend context to what’s actually happening.