Deepfake Africa Challenge

The objective of the challenge is to create convincing Deepfakes to highlight the power of this synthetic media, illustrating its creative potential for exploitation for both positive and negative outcomes and focusing debate about its ethical use / mis-use in an African context.

Deepfakes have been prominent in the news in the last 2 years as the tools and platforms that allow for such content to be produced are widely available and easy to use by both skilled and casual users.

While some Deepfakes can be used to create fun, viral videos or new synthetic applications such as digital avatars that have multiple applications, they also can be used to manipulate or generate visual and audio content with the potential to deceive with subsequent negative impacts for people, organisations and wider society

Submissions are welcome from across the African continent and relevant communities including researchers, developers, content creatives & film makers.

Note that winners must be citizens of an African country and must be residing in Africa.

Rules

Teams and collaboration

• You may participate in competitions as an individual.

• Multiple accounts per user are not permitted, and neither is collaboration across accounts. Individuals and their submissions originating from multiple accounts will be immediately disqualified from the platform.
• Code must not be shared privately. Any code that is shared, must be made available to all competition participants through the platform. (i.e. on the discussion boards).

Datasets and packages

• The solution must use publicly-available, open-source packages only.
• Automated machine learning tools such as automl are not permitted.
• You may use pre-trained models as long as they are openly available to everyone.
• Your solution must not infringe the rights of any third party and you must be legally entitled to assign ownership of all rights of copyright in and to the winning solution code to Zindi.

Submissions and winning

• You may make a maximum of 5 submissions per day. You may make a maximum of 15 submissions for this competition.
• With each submission, you are required to submit a “creation statement” that explains the art and how you created your work. This is for judging and verification purposes. Upon acceptance of the prize, you thereby agree to assign all worldwide rights of copyright in and to such winning solution to Zindi & AI Media PTY Ltd.
• Note that to count, your submission must first pass processing. If your submission fails during the processing step, it will not be counted and not receive a score; nor will it count against your daily submission limit. If you encounter problems with your submission file, your best course of action is to ask for advice on the Competition’s discussion forum.
• You acknowledge and agree that Zindi may, without any obligation to do so, remove or disqualify an individual or account if Zindi believes that such individual, or account is in violation of these rules. Entry into this competition constitutes your acceptance of these official competition rules.
• Zindi is committed to providing solutions of value to our clients and partners. To this end, we reserve the right to disqualify your submission on the grounds of usability or value. This includes but is not limited to the use of data leaks or any other practices that we deem to compromise the inherent value of your solution.
• Zindi also reserves the right to disqualify you and/or your submissions from any competition if we believe that you violated the rules or violated the spirit of the competition or the platform in any other way. The disqualifications are irrespective of your position on the leaderboard and completely at the discretion of Zindi.

Evaluation

• Submissions can be either video or audio based.
• Each submission should be no longer than 90 seconds in length (MP4 or MP3 preferred final format).
• The content submitted must NOT be offensive or harmful in anyway and any submissions deemed to contravene this rule by the judges will be immediately rejected.
• Winners must be citizens of an African country and must be residing in Africa.

All entries will be judged as follows:

1. Artistic creativity & relevance to the challenge topic
2. Level of innovation used in the process to generate the content.
3. A short explanation of platforms, tools and techniques used to generate your submission will greatly enhance your submission and are encouraged so we can build a picture of the most common tools and techniques used

The judging panel will be made up of a representatives from Zindi, The AI Media Group and Wesgro.

*The judges decision will be final.

Prizes

1. 1st Place – Complimentary ticket to join AI Expo Africa 2021 PLUS 1x return economy flight & 4x nights hotel stay B&B courtesy of Radisson Blue to join us at AI Expo Africa 2022. 1st Place Winner’s flight is eligible to delegates joining from outside the host city capped to $1000 using economy class fare. Expenses and visa costs are not included.  Top 3 placed winners will have work showcased at AI Expo Africa 2021 along with write up and press mentions
2. 2nd Place – 1x complimentary ticket to AI Expo Africa 2021 & AI Expo Africa 2022
3. 3rd Place – 1x complimentary ticket to AI Expo Africa 2021 & AI Expo Africa 2022

Timeline

• This competition closes on 30th July 2021.
• Final submissions must be received no later than 11:59 PM GM 30th July 2021.
• Winners will be notified and announced by 17 August 2021 with the winning submissions being showcased at AI Expo Africa 2021 ONLINE 7-9th September www.aiexpoafrica.com.
• We reserve the right to update the contest timeline if necessary.