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Greg Tarr, a Leaving Cert student at Bandon Grammar School in Co Cork, is the outright winner of the BT 2021 Young Scientists and Technology Expo (BTYSTE).
He devised advanced computer program that uses artificial intelligence to detect “deepfake” videos, which have wreaked havoc on social media channels. It’s faster and more accurate than many of the latest-generation detection systems, the judges found.
Screenshot of Greg Tarr’s presentation on deepfakes.
As technological tools have advanced, so has the spread of misinformation. The social impact is widespread, from bullying in a small social network to influencing democratic elections. One particularly sinister form of misinformation is when a synthetic image or video is created by replacing one face with the image of another, known as a deepfake.
This often takes the form of superimposing a celebrity’s face on an explicit image or video. The technology is now so advanced that it can be difficult for the human eye to tell if the video is fake.
It is the fifth time the Cork student has entered the BTYSTE and continues a remarkable trend in which so many overall winners come from that county, and his victory adds to a number of outstanding technology and IT winners who have conducted research. innovative. of global importance.
These include Stripe’s Patrick Collison (winner in 2005); Shane Curran, founder of the data privacy company Evervault (2017) and Sarah Flannery (1999), who discovered a new way to encrypt data.
This year’s competition was virtually staged due to Covid-19 restrictions.
More to follow
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