Here's how it will work, someone will make a deepfake of a political opponent and then publish it on a forum where like minded people gather using a dummy account.
Other dummy accounts will take the deepfake and start making a narrative around it, sending chain emails to their real world contacts.
Real world contacts will start passing around deepfake chain mail they were sent.
Some of these emails will take the deepfake as true, some will talk of it as being a funny parody, but "funny because it's true" anyway.
Major news organizations can now address the issue as news because people are passing it around, maybe it will be something like 'Well Bob, I think the X have a real image problem on their hand, if the video is true or not..' You don't mean to say you think it's true!? "I didn't say that Bob, I'm frankly not qualified to judge and I haven't done any research what I'm worried about here is that there is a perception that it is true or if it is not exactly true in this particular instance that it might be true, and that is what I mean by a real image problem"
Other dummy accounts will take the deepfake and start making a narrative around it, sending chain emails to their real world contacts.
Real world contacts will start passing around deepfake chain mail they were sent.
Some of these emails will take the deepfake as true, some will talk of it as being a funny parody, but "funny because it's true" anyway.
Major news organizations can now address the issue as news because people are passing it around, maybe it will be something like 'Well Bob, I think the X have a real image problem on their hand, if the video is true or not..' You don't mean to say you think it's true!? "I didn't say that Bob, I'm frankly not qualified to judge and I haven't done any research what I'm worried about here is that there is a perception that it is true or if it is not exactly true in this particular instance that it might be true, and that is what I mean by a real image problem"