Introducing the competition
In this chapter, we examine data from the well-known Kaggle competition the Deepfake Detection Challenge (DFDC). The competition, detailed in Reference 1, commenced on December 11, 2019, and concluded on March 31, 2020. It attracted 2,265 teams comprising 2,904 participants, who collectively made 8,951 submissions. Competitors vied for a total prize pool of $1,000,000, with the first prize being $500,000.
The event was a collaborative effort involving AWS, Facebook, Microsoft, the Partnership on AI’s Media Integrity Steering Committee, and various academic entities. At the time, there was a widespread agreement among tech industry leaders and academics on the technical complexity and rapidly changing nature of media content manipulation. The competition’s aim was to encourage global researchers to devise innovative and effective technologies to detect deepfakes and media manipulation. Unlike later competitions that focused on code, this...
