Learning about Deepfake videos on Monday was really a surprise to me. I had never heard of this technology before, although I knew that image and video manipulation software did exist. It seems that by utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence, the Deepfake videos are really boundless in terms of quality and what they can do. Therein lies the danger in their usage.
I also found the discussion at the end of class where we decided on the most important issue of the Digital Age particularly important and revealing. We determined that data sovereignty and data privacy were the two most important issues. This decision makes sense, as many issues that we had talked about previously in class, such as fake news and social media, have this aspect as a central element. I can’t help but wonder if other people share our same views. I would hope people take these affronts to privacy as serious and do not just disregard them. Otherwise, the issue will continue unhindered. It does seem to me that more attention is being given to this topic as of late, which bodes well for an eventual solution to this problem.
I am surprised that more people weren’t troubled by the Deepfake videos. I would argue this also has grave and foreboding consequences, like the invalidity of all video evidence in the legal system and thus the inability to believe what one sees. This paradigm shift would be a huge problem and would be severely deleterious to the functioning of the legal system. Having an eyewitness needed to assert the authenticity of a video sounds a bit strange in itself, but it is certainly a possibility for the future.
To be honest, as pessimistic as it sounds, relying on eyewitness testimony in the future seems more like and inevitably than a possibility. On some level, I believe that this technology will just become increasingly accessible because amongst all possible uses there are going to be less pernicious ones. Maybe I will want to create a Deepfake video of myself just to make a fun video of me flying, and the reality of it is that if I can do that with my own face then I’m probably going to be able to do it with other people’s faces as well.
I would want a future where this technology is never used without consent, but it can be really hard to track people who use these technologies in immoral ways and who are also proficient at hiding themselves online. However, I imagine the biggest obstacle isn’t the original creator but rather all the people after them who end sharing the material.