The Brave News

by Joshua Adoh

The Deepfake phenomenon is a great technological advancement and can even be seen as an evolution in cintimatic effects, however the application of this technological advancement can be quite alarming, being named the internet’s most latest moral crisis.

For those of you who do not understand the concept of the “Deepfake,” they are videos manufactured by artificial intelligence in order to make people appear to say or do things they did not do in the original video. 

Deepfake has been around for sometime now. The artificial intelligence of this software has the capabilities to affect our society negatively as well as foreign affairs. This high-tech deception technology was first spotted and reported in December 2017 in the technical and scientific section of the magazine Vice. Following this incident, a widespread bunch of fabricated videos were created of celebrities from websites to magazines.

According to AINews (Artificial Intelligence News), one of President Trump’s speeches was the first Deepfake video to be televised and it can be understood that it will not be the last.

“The station, Q13, broadcasted a doctored Trump speech in which he somehow appeared even more orange and pulled amusing faces. You can see a side-by-side comparison to the original video,” stated AINews.

The employee stationed at Q13 was found and apprehended, yet it is still unclear who created the clip and how it was allowed to air. There is a questions regarding this phenomenon: How will this technology influence our society as well as foreign decisions?

“Just five percent of Americans have ‘a lot of trust’ in the information they get from social media. This is much lower than in national and local news organizations,” according to Pew Research.

This is not the first time and will not be the last we have hear of these ‘sophisticated disinformation campaigns,’ which at one point in time the US was the main creator and influencer of these campaigns. Russia has been linked to these campaigns as well with their infamous Twitter Bots.

With this new ‘copy and paste’ video technology, it is not far-fetched to see an increased number of fabricated videos that seem like they are from reliable sources. These ‘trusted’ outlets of information together with the combined help of the subtle yet powerful influence of social media can cause an uproar of epic proportions.  

Deepfake is also affecting celebrities’ reputation. As you can imagine, this kind of publicity can be rather unflattering and offensive to rising and or plateaued celebrities. These realistic face-swaps are relatively easy to use and has created a community on Reddit, where creators can compare and swap notes of their latest projects.

Although these Deepfake videos are seen as funny and amusing now, if they begin to harm and artificially corrupt Trump and other major figures, these videos may not be so harmless.