The Capture raises the very real spectre of deepfake video

On Tuesday night the final part of the BBC's gripping drama The Capture was aired.

It's been a series that has baffled and enthralled both critics and audiences alike with its ending, in particular, dividing opinion.

Central to the plot, though, has been an examination of the working practices of the counterintelligence services and how adept they have become at using video technology.

In the words of the show's writer and director Ben Channan, whilst writing the script he was increasingly conscious of how much better and faster visual effects were becoming - and how it was possible to manipulate video.

Also aware of the current debates around fake news and facial recognition software, Channan was keen to get his drama broadcast as soon as possible, because he says, he's talking about what's happening right now in the real world.

And in that observation, Channan is undeniably right. As BBC journalist Rory Cellan Jones wrote this week, recently published research shows that there has been a huge surge in the number of 'deepfake' (deepfake is a portmanteau of 'deep learning' and 'fake') videos appearing online.

The research, carried out by cyber-security company Deeptrace, found that there were now 14,698 deepfake videos online, compared with 7,964 in December 2018.

Simply speaking, deepfake videos can be defined as when artificial intelligence technology is used to merge created material onto already existing footage. Thus, there is the opportunity to...

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- *** Many thanks to all our supporting artists who worked on

The Capture ***