We always emphasize that deepfake is a dual-spirit technology. Its open nature of malice reveals its threatening personality. Its innovative structure, being open to development, promises numerous benefits in many areas. Deepfake, for example, can also serve the mental health of humanity by deceiving people.
Double personality deepfake’s dance with the human mind
As the plausibility of synthetic media samples improves, research disclosed that deepfake has become the most dangerous of artificial intelligence (ai) technologies. It is because the pandemic process accelerated the evolution of digital transformation. The way we perceive life online has been reduced to the ability to see and hear. What makes deepfake dangerous is that it can play games with our minds and blind our perception of reality by misleading these two most basic senses.
The success of scientific studies on human mental health depends largely on the performance of clinical research and psychotherapy. But universal ethical rules, such as concerns of subjects and communication difficulties, as well as patient privacy, prevent the sharing and joint analysis of clinical research findings at a level that will serve science. At this stage, deepfake technology now comes into play. AI impersonates patients with a deepfake mask so that science can observe and analyze them in their carefree and most natural state.
We sees the one in the microscope, we don’t see the one in front of us
A microscopic virus appears to have taken over the world by 2020. It is not clear when this nightmare of unknowns will end. The fact that Covid-19 has brought modern medicine to its knees for months is due to its unknowns. The new type of coronavirus causes hundreds of thousands of people to die in pain, while millions of people can survive the disease without even realizing that they have infected by the virus. So along with anxiety, indifference also increases. Because of this shallow perception, in the process of developing the vaccine of science, Covid-19 will unfortunately continue to spread to millions and pluck hundreds of thousands from life.
Despite all the insensitivity of societies, as diseases that threaten human life spread, awareness also necessarily increases. As in the example of the new type of Covid-19, diseases that lead to high death rates, especially epidemic diseases, cardiovascular diseases and cancer, do not fall off the agenda. Along with scientists, international health organizations and physicians, patients and their immediate environment are also seeking treatment. However, human health does not consist of physical health, that is, bodily health solely. Health problems that occur in the brain, which manages the entire body, affect a person’s entire life, from their bodily functions, mental capacity, ability to think and perceive, to their feelings, reactions and behavior. Despite studies in many related sciences, such as neurology, psychiatry and psychology, diseases related to the brain and nervous system are largely ignored in many parts of the world, even by patients and their relatives. They avoid of the diagnosis and treatment process.
Are we aware of the psychological pandemic?
The human mind, where stress disrupts factory settings and technology makes it lonely in crowds, is almost vulnerable to countless external factors. In addition to life-threatening brain and nervous system diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and MS, a large number of diseases such as schizophrenia, bipolarity, post-traumatic stress, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder repels people off from life. Depression and personality disorders, which are seen as the fate of the age, are now considered natural states of man. However, these diseases, most of which are ignored, hidden or ignored, are also spreading quicker in modern society than Covid-19.
A psychological pandemic, which is increasingly becoming a social legacy through unhealthy intergenerational interaction and transmission, threatens not only the patient and his immediate social environment, but also an entire society. Because carriers of psychological infection can sometimes come across as a friend, a spouse, a manager at work, a public official equipped with legal powers, and even an opinion leader who leads societies. Therefore, although we are not sufficiently aware, scientific research on human mental health is as important as research and scientific advances on physical health.
The most reasonable use of deepfake
The video news, prepared by Tina Trinh, a reporter for The Voice of America (VOA), the international broadcaster of the United States, at the end of June, conveyed a new area of use that best suits the mind of deepfake. The news was posted on VOA with the headline “doctor won’t see you now; deepfakes in Therapist’s office.” “Now this initiative shows how Face-changing technology can be a practical tool to improve mental health and therapy practices,” the report said.
The initiative mentioned in the news was the innovation that deliberate AI, which provides AI-based registration and analysis services for psychology, psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychotherapy, brought to clinical research. This innovation, which opened new horizons to science in the field of mental health and therapy, was a kind of deepfake therapy method in which patients subject to clinical research were impersonated with a deepfake mask.
In psychotherapy, the “ethical transparency” revolution
Marc Aefjes, founder and CEO of Deliberate AI, describes the specifics of their initiative, noting the professional challenge experienced by specialist clinicians. Aefjes points out that: clinicians do not have enough time and conditions during the interview with the patient to be able to note their observations in a way that analyzes them healthily. According to Aefjes, scheduled therapists record sessions with their patients, but this time the obligation to protect patient privacy gains importance. In addition, a data kit consisting of a video archive of a large number of cases is also important in terms of allowing different analyses and thus contributing to scientific development. That’s where deepfake face swap technology comes in.
Deliberate AI changes the faces of patients in video recordings with deepfake face swap technology. The patient turns into a different person, but the emotions, facial expressions, reactions remain the same. In other words, although the therapy does not lose anything from the value of the analysis, the patient’s identity remains protected and confidential. Moreover, in this new system, AI also contributes to the analysis process of therapy. He establishes the relationship between the patient’s voice analysis and the psychological state of speech differences. He reveals different situations in his life that change the way patients talk. Thanks to all these possibilities, it is not a necessity for the doctor to see the patient, as in the news headline. Other physicians and clinics that have never seen the patient can also become stakeholders in diagnosis and treatment.
Nearly 2 billion people have a broken psychology?
According to 2017 data from the World Health Organization (WHO), which has become a more important international organization than the United Nations with the pandemic, the number of people affected by psychological diseases in the world is approaching 800 million. Against this background, according to data from the year in which deepfake first appeared, about one in 10 people 3 years ago experienced psychological problems at some point in their life. Both because data is ahead of the global crisis and because diagnosis and reporting in many parts of the world are far behind the truth, Deliberate AI calculates the number of people experiencing psychological problems in the world at more than 1.7 billion. According to this, one out of every 5 people experiences psychological discomfort at some time in their life. Psychological health is also the largest category of health spending in the United States, with health spending exceeding $ 225 billion. Despite this, even in the US, misdiagnosis occurs at a high rate, according to the definition of Deliberate AI. Outcome measurements with treatment options are also moving away from science.
Target of 8-person start-up is “Psychologist AI”
Founded this year, Deliberate AI describes its mission as “improving psychological healthcare by empowering clinical research with evidence-based technology solutions.” To improve productivity and patient outcomes, it aims to build a future in which all mental health interactions are secretly recorded and automatically analyzed. AI-based machine learning and deepfake technologies are applied to audio and video recordings in therapy sessions to improve diagnostic performance, objectively monitor the process, and provide actionable insights into treatment. The solutions offered will also help build a large dataset that will significantly accelerate mental health research and further improve patient outcomes.
Announcing that it is currently sharing the first version of its digital platform with several Alpha-user clinics, Deliberate AI plans to launch a mobile product soon for clinical psychologists in private practice. The company won the $ 25k Innovation Showcase Award from Mount Sinai Health Group in the U.S.A in February. In addition, their presentation was approved by the NSF SBIR AI Grant Program, which supports innovation projects in the United States. Currently, the company has a team of 8 people, most of whom are part-time, and also has a worldwide advisory board in the field of machine learning, psychotherapy and psychiatry.
Psychoanalysis will also be based on AI
It is not known what Freud would say if he heard it, but the important contributions that AI and machine learning can make in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis are also the subject of academic research. A group of researchers from the Ferkauf Institute of Psychology and Deliberate AI at Yeshiva University in New York, including Aafjes and her sister, examined “the scope of machine learning in Psychotherapy Research” in their scientific paper published on August 29. The study noted that machine learning offers robust statistical and probabilistic techniques that can help make sense of large amounts of data.
A study on “machine learning and natural language processing in psychotherapy research”, published in July by a group of researchers from different disciplines at the University of Utah, noted that machine learning, which significantly changes scientific research, can also promise solutions to the limitations encountered in mental health care and psychotherapy.
Psychological health, which interacts with the brain and nervous system, is of critical and strategic importance for Community Health. But the emotional threshold cannot be overcome for the socialization of the diagnosis and treatment process. If Deepfake becomes a mask for faces in psychotherapy, revealing souls, AI will have offered perhaps the greatest service to human intelligence…