This is an interesting thought, but I also wonder what constitutes a legitimate video. I have been comparing events that I see reported to the actual event for a long time (in cases where I was able to witness the actual event) and the reported event rarely ever reflects the actual event. One of the most jarring is watching C-SPAN, then watching the commentary on it on the news. What the news reports is rarely anything close to my takeaway from watching the actual hearing, speech, etc...

To your point though, the deepfakes will make it cheaper and easier. But I guess I'm so cynical I already feel like most people are fooled.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

People will have to assume that content is fake and it will force innovation to enable distinguishing between noise and signal. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets much better than it is now.

What if that "innovation" is a global interface to the online world, enforced by a global digital identity system in which your actions online have direct consequences on your life offline, such as affecting where you can travel, whether you're allowed to have children or not, what you can buy and how much money you're allowed to save.

What if the people of the world openly embrace this system because the alternative is a world of chaos with 1,000,000 indistinguishability "real" versions of the truth?

Real footage from the past could be removed and replaced with deep fakes and history rewritten.

Real video footage of a presidential speech made yesterday could be convincingly altered a thousand times whilst circulating the internet, sewing hysteria, chaos and confusion. State media would become the single source of truth for finding the original "real" footage, and even then we would have no certainty it was the original, unaltered footage.