Deepfakes & Disinformation — Digital Futures

🎯 Learning Objectives

✓Identify signs of AI-generated images and video using visual inspection techniques
✓Explain how synthetic media creates new challenges for trust and democracy
✓Evaluate a set of media artefacts using verification tools and techniques

📚 Key Vocabulary

Deepfake

AI-generated video/audio making someone appear to say or do something they didn't

Synthetic media

Any media (image, video, audio) created or modified by AI

Media forensics

Techniques for detecting manipulated or AI-generated content

Liar's dividend

The way deepfakes let real footage be dismissed as fake

⏱️ Lesson Timing (50 mins)

🪝

Hook

5 mins

Show 4 images — 2 real, 2 AI-generated. Students vote. Reveal. Then explain how you can tell. The tells are getting much harder to spot.

👨‍🏫

Teach

12 mins

•What deepfakes are: AI trained on thousands of images of a face
•How to spot them: hands/fingers (AI still struggles), reflections, teeth, background consistency, lighting
•Audio deepfakes: voice cloning from 30 seconds of audio
•Tools being used: Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, ElevenLabs (voice)
•Real-world harms: election interference, financial fraud, harassment
•The liar's dividend: "that real video must be a deepfake"
•Verification tools: Bing Image Search, TinEye, Hive Moderation, InVID

🛠️

Create

38 mins

Deepfake detection lab: students receive a pack of 12 images/short clips (pre-curated mix of real and AI-generated). For each: classify (real/fake), identify 2 specific tells, and record confidence (1-10). Then cross-check using Bing Image Search or TinEye. Final task: write a 200-word "Media Verification Guide" for a school newspaper editor — what checks to run before publishing any submitted image.

Tools:

Bing Image SearchTinEyeInVID WeVerifyWord Online

📢

5 mins

Which image fooled the most people? What made it convincing?

🔧 Tools & Resources

Bing Image Search

✅ Free

https://www.bing.com/images

https://weverify.eu/tools/

🤖 AI Angle

AI is creating the problem — and AI is also part of the detection solution. But humans must remain the final check.

📝 Evidence of Learning

Detection lab worksheet with classifications and tells + Media Verification Guide

📚 Homework

Find a news story that involved a deepfake or AI-generated image being shared as real. Write a summary: what happened, how it was detected, and what the consequences were.

⏱️ 20 mins

♿ Differentiation

Support (for students who need help)

Images pre-labelled with one confirmed tell — students find the second

Extension (for advanced learners)

Research legislation around deepfakes in the UK. What is currently legal or illegal? What protections exist?

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