Will this be the 'spam' that destroys our civilized world? When we cannot believe our own senses, then our only refuge will be a construct that WE made so we know we can trust it? Will we voluntarily enter the matrix to escape the chaos that we have corrupted our reality into?
Meh, we've been in this predicament since we could communicate. The kind of falsehoods that we already spread are already a problem. Simple HN comments go just as mentally viral yet it wasn't until the recent "fake news" meme and deepfakes did people begin acknowledging the broader problem.
Deepfakes are just another prong on the same trident. I don't see how they are any worse than the screenshots of bullshit headlines that already go viral on Reddit/Twitter.
Hell, just think of all the suffering that's been caused by people believing in some random stuff written by other humans in an old religious book without questioning it. And people think it's deepfakes that might be civ-ending?
> Hell, just think of all the suffering that's been caused by people believing in some random stuff written by other humans in an old religious book without questioning it. And people think it's deepfakes that might be civ-ending?
But that suffering was civ-ending for some civilizations. I don't really care if some civilizations thereafter survive and go on to forget about this impending crisis. I care that MY civilization survives.
I also don't care to survive in a civilization if it is ruled by suffering.
We've learned not to believe screenshots, anything shared on social media, or even regular media. This is another on the list. (Social) media is still worse - I grew up with newspapers photoshopping party logos from crime scenes, and even photoshopping buildings from campaigns.
It will boil back down to basic philosophy, questioning everything. Our senses have always lied to us, just as our emotions and motivations. Maybe we'll just learn to be better at discerning the lies.
We've learned not to believe screenshots, anything shared on social media, or even regular media.
People do understand that fake videos can happen, but they also believe they require a great deal of effort. That means they might think a video of Trump is fake because his enemies have the resources to fake it, but they won't think the same way about a video of a member of the public or someone they know.
I'm quite sure that if 99% of people outside of the tech industry were shown a deep fake video of a co-worker in a porn clip they would believe it was real.
Scary thought - but a practical question is how will deep fakes influence video as courtroom evidence? Some countries have laws that only approved recording devices are acceptable for recording such evidence, but is this the end of phone recorded evidence?
There was a marked decline in attorney’s ability to utilize private detectives to spy on opposing parties or to present still shots as alabi’s that started (at least in my area of the US) somewhere around 2005. I’d say it took a while for the distrust of stills due to the possibility of generic ‘photoshopping’, but actual and test juries are less likely to definitively base decisions on stills if the opposing lawyer can in any conceivably reasonable way claim it’s edited.
As a side note, I am less concerned with the use of deep fakes to frame (civil or criminal) a person, it is more the potential for an attorney to put big wholes in a jury’s trust of video evidence by showing a faked image as counterproof and then flat out telling jurors that one is fake and therefore the other side can’t prove it’s case.
Caveat -> this doesn’t apply to police generated evidence, because a majority of jurors, to a statistical certainty barring exceptional circumstances, ALWAYS believe cops.
I realize how buzzwordy and ridiculous this could sound on the surface, but this seriously might bring about a growing trend in using blockchain as a way to validate content used in legal proceedings.
A simple but possibly useful scenario could be at the time of recording a video, immediately storing a hash of its content on a blockchain somewhere to validate its authenticity later (if needed). Imagine if iPhone or Android did this by default whenever a video or picture were taken.
