Hollywood calls upon computer scientist Siwei Lyu

UB faculty member Siwei Lyu wears many hats.

Educator. Computer scientist. Detector of deepfakes and other digital forgeries. And now … technical consultant to the film industry.

Lyu, SUNY Empire Innovation Professor of Computer Science and Engineering who co-directs the Center for Information Integrity at UB, served as an unpaid consultant on the upcoming film “G20” starring Viola Davis.

The action thriller centers on Davis, who portrays the president of the United States, and how she must overcome a terrorist group that seizes the G20 summit. A key part of the plot involves deepfakes. To ensure this technology is accurately portrayed, the movie’s production team called upon Lyu, who frequently helps news media worldwide determine the veracity of digital content.

He joined the production team, as well as the movie’s director, Patricia Riggen, on video calls beginning in late 2023.

“Their main purpose involving me was to ensure technical accuracy when they show the generation of deepfakes of the U.S. president,” says Lyu, whose UB Media Forensic Lab developed the DeepFake-O-Meter for spotting fake images and videos.

“I introduced the background of deepfakes, the general workflow of using AI models to make deepfakes, and important terminologies such as training data, generative models, model training, machine learning and more,” he explains.

He also provided screenshots of training a deepfake model, examples of deepfake videos to demonstrate the capacity of the model and workflow. 

As a show of gratitude, the production team plans to send Lyu a poster of the movie signed by Davis and other main characters, as well as give him a shoutout in the closing credits.

The movie, by Amazon MGM Studios, is scheduled to be released worldwide on Amazon Prime Video on April 10.