High
Fake
The more synthetic media is perceived to be legitimate and authoritative, the content is more likely to be trusted, persuasive, and acted upon.
Synthetic media can range from non-interactive, not ongoing, or not consistent (low) to interactive, ongoing, and consistent (high).
Synthetic media can range from very recognizable and familiar (high) or hardly (or not) recognizable and familiar (low).
Synthetic media can range from evoking a significant affective response (high) to barely or not at all eliciting an affective reaction.
Synthetic media can range from broadcast to a wide human audience or technical security measures (high) to a narrow, specific human audience or tailored technical security measure (low).
The spread of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs and affect through social aggregates from one member to another
Deepfake technology intentionally using the likeness of famous and/or credible authorities in an effort to shape the behaviors, attitudes, beliefs and/or emotions of the target audience
Information, especially of a biased, misleading or non-rational nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view
The media is intended to serve as a catalyst for political argument, discord and divisiveness.
Content created to serve an information or psychological operation purpose.
Intentional strategy and tactics meant to mislead, misdirect and manipulate the perceptions of a target audience through simulation (showing the false) and/or dissimulation (hiding the real)
The tendency to seek information that confirms or supports a predetermined position or conclusion.
In assessing other people, it is the tendency for a person’s positive trait to be generalized to possess other positive traits.
Tendency to do favors for people whom we like. Can be exploited by establishing rapport with target before asking for action.
Tendency to comply with authority figures (usually legal or expert authorities). Exploitable by assuming the persona or impersonating an authority figure.
Perceived shared identity based on similarity in a trait, affiliation, or belief. This can be a powerful influence tactic as people tend to be more open to persuasion by someone they identify with.
A form of motivated reasoning, this is both a cognitive and social response, in which individuals, consciously or unconsciously, allow emotion-loaded motivational biases affect how new information is perceived. In particular, information is often interpreted to correspond with hope/wants/wishes and information to the contrary is ignored.
The Mere Exposure Effect is a cognitive bias where individuals show a preference for things they’re more familiar with. Repeated exposure to a stimulus increases liking and familiarity, even without conscious recognition.
Both humans and automation may be targeted by synthetic media attacks. This criteria references whether the target of the attack was human or automation. The highlighted icon represents the intended target of this submitted media.
Human
Technical
Hybrid
Unknown
A measure of if the attack was constructed by a human or by artificial intelligence. The highlighted icon represents the method of control of this submitted media.
Human
Automation
Hybrid
Unknown
The medium is the format of the content submitted. Highlighted items represent all of the various formats contained in the submitted content.
Text
Image
Video
Audio
Technical complexity of the atttack.
How damaging the attack was intended to be.
The post and image were designed to shape beliefs of the target audience to believe that former President Trump took the time to leave his motorcade to sit and take a picture with the young African American men depicted in the photo. The effort was likely meant to curry favor with the African American community and sway African American votes in favor of Trump.
Intentional strategy and tactics meant to mislead, misdirect and manipulate the perceptions of a target audience through simulation (showing the false) and/or dissimulation (hiding the real)
The creator and/or disseminator of the media seeks to create political discord, argumentation and divisiveness.
Intentional effort to shape the perceptions, decisions, and behaviors of target audiences to achieve specific objectives.
Perception management is the deliberate effort to influence and control the perception of a target audience through strategic use of information, communication, and other practices to shape the way something is observed and interpreted.
Motivation is the underlying activator, purpose or sustained reasons for why the deepfake threat actor wants to create nefarious synthetic media.
The post and image were designed to shape beliefs of the target audience to believe that former President Trump took the time to leave his motorcade to sit and take a picture with the young African American men depicted in the photo. The effort was likely meant to curry favor with the African American community and sway African American votes in favor of Trump.
Targeting is the threat actor’s intentional selection of a target audience, or the group or individual whom he is interested in impacting with his deepfake campaign.
The target audience, while broadly, United States citizens eligible to vote, in particularly this targeted the African American community to cultivate liking and vote swaying for Trump.
Research & Reconnaissance occurs when the threat actor is effortfully gathering information about the target audience, the optimal channels to conduct their campaign on, the relevant narratives for the attack, and type of content that will have the desired impact on the target audience.
No case specific insights generated.
Preparation & Planning are the steps and processes that the threat actor takes to acquire the tools and content needed to create the deepfake media for their campaign and their deliberation for the execution of the campaign.
No case specific insights generated.
Production is the threat actor’s use of tools and content for the creation and development of deepfake media for their attack campaign.
No case specific insights generated.
Narrative Testing. A narrative is a story, or an account of related events or experiences. A good narrative will have story coherence, such that both the story being told and its relationship to the real world are cohesive and clear. In deepfake campaigns, threat actors consider and evaluate the possible narratives—particularly in relation to events and context—to support the campaign in an effort to maximize the believability and efficacy of the attack.
The synthetic media sought to perpetuate a message that former President Donald Trump went out of his way to engage with the African American community, particularly those in the young African American male demographic.
Deployment is the threat actor’s intentional transmission of deepfake content to the target audience through selected online channels.
This synthetic media was deployed via the X social media platform
Amplification is the threat actor’s intentional efforts to maximize the visibility, virality and target audience exposure to their deepfake content.
The post and synthetic media garnered over a million views and thousands of reposts, causing virality on the X platform.
Post-Campaign is the period after the target audience has received and been exposed to the deepfake content.
This image was the sole image sent and not part of larger set of images or videos.
Two main aspects of media such as this should be considered: 1) The context of the user posting it. -Does the user seem to exhibit political biases or extremes? - Has this person posted unusual or fantastical content previously? 2) Has the image been visibly altered in any way? -This image is visibly altered with the X username "@Trump_History45" on one of the young men's shirts, scorss his chest. There are no expected wrinkles or contours with the shirt, revealing that it was added to the image. When images are at minmum visually altered or edited like this, Psyber Labs suggests being circumspect of the creation and processing history of the image.