This week, we were introduced to the world of deep fakes. Prior to this week I had only seen the Jordan Peele/Buzzfeed video – which circulated around Facebook in 2018 when it came out. Additionally, in 2019, I watched one of Shane Dawson’s conspiracy theory videos where he contextualises deep fakes as a way to ‘steal’ the identity of a celebrity and how this is also used in the porn industry, without consent (both the original videos’ creator and the identity of the celebrity).
In the reading, Are Deep Fakes a Shallow Concern? Deep fakes are very much seen as a potential weapon, and a means for deception in the media. I find it interesting that both Reddit and Facebook almost immediately shut down any deep fake content, because it was (and still is) a relatively new idea to the average person. I would like to think that because of this, we will not being seeing any deception in the media caused by deep fakes, but given the rise of AI technologies and the introduction of synthetic models and actors, there is always going to be that risk of forgery. I think that in this case it is about finding a balance in the advancements of technology we do see. How can we encourage the development of AI and so quickly condemn the misuse of these technologies? When we used Luminar 4 and Pixaloop in class, that was an interesting exercise in seeing how easily things can be manipulated. By the click of a button, we could replace the sky with no further action required. Now, if we were to go and post these online, and let people believe this was a real photograph, that is not automatically considered foul play. But where is that line, and when will we know we have overstepped it?