A few days ago, my friend messaged me in tears over a video she received from another friend. A big Celine Dion fan, she was very upset to see a recording of one of her favourite singers sitting helpless and unable to leave a wheelchair unaided to dance at her son’s wedding. It was a genuinely heart-breaking video; a quick Google search also told me it was fake.
My friend is clever and extremely computer savvy; she’s also only in her 30s and knows all about deepfakes, conspiracies and the leaps and bounds that artificial intelligence has made. If this extremely believable video fooled her (and it was an excellent fake that had me tearing up, too), how would someone less tech-savvy fare if they had received the same video?
Had I not decided to Google it or had no one online commenting about it and cleared up the mystery surrounding it, none of us would have been any the wiser. And when you think about it in those terms, it’s terrifying.
In the past, the truth counted for something. If a man gave you his word, it was his bond. Wars have been fought, people have been killed and marriages have been brokered and broken based on nothing more or less than keeping one’s promises.
The problem is that people started to manipulate and exploit the truth to fit their own twisted agendas somewhere along the way. I can’t even count the number of times that Donald Trump, for example, would take a situation that everyone could see happening with their own eyes and call it fake news because it suited him. In the above case I started with today, the exact opposite happened.
The problem is that people started to manipulate and exploit the truth to fit their own twisted agendas somewhere along the way- Anna Marie Galea
It’s horrible and disgusting enough when someone takes a video and manipulates it to look like something or someone else but you feel the real betrayal when you realise that we are fast approaching an age where you can no longer even trust our own eyes.
The worst part is that we are entering this era completely unequipped. No one is talking about how ChatGPT is slowly but surely taking over certain content spheres or how students already use it to write their assignments.
No one is instructing people on what to look out for when sharing certain videos and barely a peep was made about the fact that the latest fad of getting your AI portrait generated meant that the work of thousands of artists was being ripped off for free.
We are entering this next phase of technological development blind and, in a country where so many people are so computer illiterate, this really could spell disaster.
It’s important more than ever that our authorities take the time to educate and inform people about what to look out for when surfing the web and not just recklessly share whatever comes up with wild abandon.
Instead of just reading an article’s caption, read the whole thing; if a viral video makes its way into your inbox, research its provenance before sharing it. It should also go without saying that you don’t make fake videos about people’s illnesses. Technology is a valuable servant but a dangerous master to have.