🧠 Deepfakes 101 Recap: What’s Real, What’s Not, and What to Do About It

Presented live at Minnebar by Jenny and Greg Swan from The Cave Project

May 06, 2025

Deepfake fraud is up 2137%—and yes, someone can clone your voice in under 27 seconds. But this isn’t just a spooky headline. It’s a full-on trust crisis in the making. And here at The Cave Project, we felt like it merited its own conversation. And Minnebar was the perfect place!

First held in 2006, Minnebar is the nation's largest and longest-running technology unconference — based right here in Minneapolis. Now celebrating its 19th year, #Minnebar19 attracted 2,000 registrants, 167 sessions, a chock-full Best Buy HQ campus, and an absolutely stellar Minneapolis tech community.

In our live keynote-style presentation at Minnebar last weekend, we broke down how deepfakes work, why our brains fall for them, and (most importantly) how to fight back without living in constant fear.

TL;DR: panic is not a strategy, but awareness is.

Whether you attended the session or not, we wanted to share our presentation’s key takeaways, tips, and our #1 DO THIS RIGHT NOW recommendation to protect yourself and your people from deepfakes.

Let’s get into it! -Jenny & Greg

🔍 The Cave Project’s Deepfakes 101 Key Takeaways:

Deepfakes are synthetic media: audio or video generated by AI that mimics real people.
The tech isn’t inherently evil; it’s how it’s used that matters.
Our brains are wired to trust voices and faces, which makes deepfakes extra effective (and scary).
It’s a game nobody wins: You can train yourself to spot them, and teach others to do the same. But the better we get at spotting them, the better the tech gets at fooling us.

💡 Pro Tips from Jenny & Greg

Train your brain: Pause. Ask questions. Use multiple methods to verify.
Watch out for giveaways and clues: Weird mouth movements, too-smooth skin, odd blinking, or distorted voices. And if it’s hitting you emotionally, gut-check if you’re being manipulated.
Be skeptical, not cynical: Default skepticism is the new media literacy. We know it doesn’t feel good, but it just is.

🎙️ Check out The Cave Project Archives

If you’re just joining us, welcome! We’re on Season 2 of The Cave Project — a movement exploring the nuance of our modern-day reality and the tension of our technological future with Jenny and Greg Swan. Learn more about us here. Check out the archives here.

🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, watch on YouTube, subscribe on Substack to be notified of future episodes, and follow The Cave Project on Instagram!

The #1 Thing You Can Do Right Now to Protect Yourself and Your People from Deepfakes: SET A FAMILY PASSWORD

Synthetic image made in Midjourney for The Cave Project

Do this RIGHT NOW:

Create a family password. This is a secret code phrase that will help you shortcut if someone who is calling you or in a video chat online is “real.” This way if your “kid” calls crying for help or your “boss” calls needing you to lock in a deal, you have a very easy passkey to know if they’re “real” and the situation is “real.”

A few things about the password to keep in mind:

Not your pet’s name
Nothing you’ve ever put online
Something memorable
Don’t communicate or store it anywhere digitally
Choose something you could recall when under stress/duress

Even with the password, you’re going to need to be more vigilant in the coming months and years. But this is a practical, accessible way to stay a step ahead of the phishers and fakers right now.

If this advice resonates with you, please SHARE IT with your people below ⤵️

🛠 Tools & Resources to Stay Ahead of the Fakes

As promised in our session, below is a list of recommended resources. We can’t recommend the “Meet Your Digital Maker” tool enough:

🧪 “Detect Fakes” Interactive Quiz — MIT Media Lab
Test your instincts and learn what giveaways to look for.
🧠 “Cheap Fakes vs. Deepfakes” Education Module — Poynter Institute
Quick primer on types of visual misinformation.
🕵️ Deepfakes & Other Trickery in Imagery — Mozilla Foundation
Tools for understanding and detecting manipulated media.
🚨 First AI-ID Kit — Accenture
A DIY guide to understand, experience, and mitigate deepfake risks.
😱 Meet Your Digital Maker — Accenture
An interactive guide that will walk you through what a deepfake is by making a deepfake of you in the process! Highly recommended!
🎙 Deepfakes Rapid Response Toolkit — WITNESS
Created for journalists, but helpful for anyone navigating misinformation.
🤖 Second Thought GPT - Michael Cherenson
A “pre-bunking” AI assistant that helps you gut-check suspicious content.

If you missed the session and are interested in Jenny and Greg presenting this to your organization (or to your family!), let us know. We’re working through opportunities to expand this kind of knowledge sharing and conversation.

Until then… stay sharp, stay human, and maybe pick a family safe word that’s not your your family’s street name, right?

Thanks for coming along. See you in the future! -Jenny and Greg

The Cave Project