What Happens When Deep Fakes Get Too Realistic?
Fake news has created a post-truth reality, but AI deep fake technology could be the final straw
I’ve swallowed my fair share of black pills in the past few years. Where does one even begin?
With the wholesale abandonment of civil rights and the wilful destruction of the world economy ostensibly to protect perfectly healthy people from a virus with a 99.98% survival rate…
…with the subsequent mandating of an untested gene therapy on billions of people in abject violation of the Nuremberg Code amounting to both the greatest medical experiment and greatest crime against humanity in history…
…or with the appropriation of nearly a trillion dollars (thus far) of Western taxpayers’ money to finance the latest boondoggle in the Military Industrial Complex’s rotation of forever wars…
Hope is thin on the ground my friends. And now, to make a sick joke even sicker, they’re bailing out the banks again.
The memes practically write themselves. I just whipped this one up – but you could change out my captions for a thousand other examples of the gross hubris of our ruling elites and still be spoiled for variations.
But much as the monumental gaslighting, larceny, and assault demoralises and depresses me, none of these manifestations of the machine’s quest for total dominance worry me quite so much as the rapidly approaching AI singularity.
Leaving aside for a moment the most truly terrifying spectre of a sentient, Skynet style consciousness, the most imminent question that has me up nights and loath to get out of bed some mornings is what happens when deep fakes get too realistic?
You’ve likely seen a few doing the rounds recently, possibly even been fooled by one – I know I have. The fact is they are now getting so good that, at a glance, one can be taken in.
I don’t need to provide a whole slew of examples – you can entertain yourself for hours on YouTube exploring deep fake technology, but if you’re not familiar here’s one of the better-known creations of late.
The Morgan Freeman example is impressive but clearly fake when closely examined. A more recent creation however, and one that begins to highlight the potential misuse of deep fake technology, is this video of Joe Biden apparently dunking on trans people.
Again, close inspection reveals it is doctored. But interestingly it’s less the visual authenticity and more the fact that Biden is speaking coherently, without stammering and stumbling over his words, that gives it away.
This is the state of the tech now, and it’s good for a laugh and a bit of a wow moment. But what happens in a few years when these deep fake videos become completely indistinguishable from reality? And make no mistake – this will happen at some point, it’s only a matter of time.
I’ve heard it argued that we are already living in a ‘post-truth’ world. That is, reality has become entirely subjective, dictated largely by one’s tribal political affiliation and where they choose to get their news. The term ‘fake news’ heralded our post-truth epoch, in which the facts of any given scenario are not important, only the solemnity with which one’s chosen media outlet can fact-check the opposition into ignominy.
The HBO series Chernobyl opens with a brilliant monolog from Soviet nuclear physicist Valery Legasov (played by Jared Harris) who led the commission that investigated the 1986 nuclear catastrophe, in which he says:
“What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories? In these stories, it doesn't matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is: Who is to blame?"
I have not had time to investigate Legasov’s audio tapes, which surfaced immediately after his suicide in 1988, to ascertain if he ever actually spoke these words, but regardless, they stand out for me as perhaps the most elegant and succinct indictment of our collective human condition ever uttered.
To a large extent I agree that we have entered a post-truth paradigm: The lies are so ubiquitous now that it has become a genuine daily challenge to recognise the truth – even for those of us who have nominally freed our minds from the establishment thought control matrix.
And for those who have not – what else indeed is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content themselves instead with stories? We have seen where such a reality leads, and Legasov’s words of indictment for the crumbling Soviet edifice resound thirty-five years later with a chilling prescience – in these stories, it doesn't matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is: Who is to blame?
Who is to blame indeed? Trump or Biden. Putin or Zelensky. Bill Gates or Elon Musk. We pick our sides and shut our eyes and ears to anything that departs from the approved narrative.
At least, most people do.
There is still enough access to factual information and still enough of us who seek the truth as our primary purpose in life for the lies to be exposed. Granted, it’s an uphill battle each day, and one whose outcome is dubious, but for now at least – the camera never lies.
As such, video has been the beacon of hope in the war against the machine, for through the instant availability of high-definition internet video the people of the world can view in real time the events that are unfolding (if they so choose).
Of course sometimes the camera does lie – like when partisan news organisations play specific segments of video repeatedly to elicit a certain response from their viewers. Do you remember everyone clutching their pearls about what Donald Trump said in this video @1:00?
Less well known is what he said only a minute later @1:55 which completely changes the context.
So, yes, the camera can be manipulated to tell lies, but for now at least, those of us who wish to lay the truth bare are still able to do so via the medium of video, as has been consistently proven by the outstanding work of James O’Keefe, most recently evidenced in the bombshell Pfizer expose, so controversial in fact that it likely precipitated his ousting from the company that he built from the ground up by its craven board of directors.
But what happens when we can no longer distinguish real video from fake?
CNN won’t need to selectively air Trump’s remarks to make him sound like a white supremacist – they can just roll a deep fake of him saying something that proves he is. And if called out on it they have plausible deniability – they can just say “Hey, that’s what the video shows, and it looks real to us.”
The Biden deep fake above is ludicrous because we all know that 1) Joe Biden can’t speak that fluently and 2) he would never say such things about his beloved trans community (at least not in public – no matter how demented he becomes). The real danger in deep fake video is not these outlandish comedic creations but in something so close to what actually happened that only those present in the moment would be able to differentiate the true footage from the fake.
The news cycle already moves at lightning speed to the extent that the narrative is spun, digested, accepted as gospel, and then shelved within 24 hours. We are already so close to the post-truth world described by Valery Legasov that our society in the West is locked in a de facto civil war.
What hope have we of arresting this runaway train when we are no longer able to believe our own eyes? How do we return the world to a rational civil discourse when there are no common terms of reference?
We are already so discombobulated that even I sometimes think ‘What’s the point? Wouldn’t it be much easier to tune out and let it all burn?’ Flawless deep fake technology could well be the final straw that tips us over the brink into pure chaos.
What happens to humans when we no longer recognize the truth, and all we have left are stories? Stories in which it doesn't matter who the heroes are, only: who is to blame.
War is what happens. Hateful, bloody, unrelenting war.
How do we mitigate such a potentially destructive technology? This is not my field of expertise, and the best I’ve been able to come up with is some kind of blockchain based verification system that works in real time to distinguish truth from fiction.
I’m sure someone is working on it – but the question is: Which will arrive first, the problem or the solution?
And if it is the former, then how long will the fire burn before the sprinklers come on?
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."
Orwell.