Continuing the trend with how AI has tremendously influenced our perception of reality, there has been a surge in a new shocking form of tech that has everyone looking over their shoulder. No longer are we playing pranks on people by calling their landlines trying to alter our voices, a new form of technology allow people to create images and video recordings of a person's likeness to spread false narratives and misleading news. What is this called? It is called deep fakes. A deep Fake uses AI to generate videos, images or even audios with the end goal of portraying something that did not actually occur in reality. Mostly we see deep fakes used in creating non-consenual pornagraphy videos, mostly of celebrities. But more often that not, we are started to see deepfakes be used in political agendas and schemas.
Donald Trump came under fire just a couple years ago from a deep fake that depicted him giving speech calling for Belgium to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. He never gave this speech and later it was proven that a Belgian political party had created that video for political propaganda. It is a growing concern that deep fakes will be used in such ways to alter and interfere with free elections by promoting misleading information and fake news. Luckily, for now, there are ways to combat this new AI technology.
Because Deep Fakes are so new to technology, it is more likely that the common eye can notice discrepancies in the picture and audio causing it to look fake. However, as technology advances, It will become harder and harder to notice deepfakes with just an eye. The war against deep fakes lies with big tech and AI companies themselves. Some have taken initiative in developing software to scan videos for digital footprints and created algorithms to alert viewers of when they are watching a AI altered video. Unfortunately these efforts are not to scale and some call for policy and law to step in to combat the spread of false information that deep fakes contribute to.
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