DEEPFAKE AUTOFICTION- A DISTURBING TREND IN THE LITERARY WORLD OF AI
Visual and auditory manipulation is commonplace since the inception of media technology. In nowadays terminology, it is termed Deepfakes, which has taken the entire social media generation by storm. No second video or imagery content could be proven to be authentic until passed by a statutory body of governance. There have been a variety of intruding actions that have been doing the rounds under the bigger umbrella term- Deepfakes. Face and body swapping; voice-swapping or text-to-speech swaps; face morphing or full body puppetry; lip syncing and many other types of fraudulent activities could be labeled under Deepfakes.
Nobody thought that deep learning and machine learning branches of artificial intelligence would reach the point where it would directly harm the integrity and genuineness of the individual in question. Initial attacks of deepfakes were charged at internationally famed personalities such as Emma Watson, Katy Perry, Tom Cruise, Scarlet Johannsson, Eminent Presidents Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump, among many others. They were being victimized by transposing faces without their permission onto other illicit video-audio creators.
Beyond pornography, misrepresentation of influential political and social figures, or even blackmail in its severity, deepfakes have been framed by the learned members of the society as a severe threat to linguistic expression, knowledge, and society at large. Traditional fiction has also been tarnished at the expense of deepfake technologies being misused.
You must be thinking- Why are Deepfakes becoming so popular?
Simply because of two major reasons: their Believability and Accessibility. The impact that this deep fake content has on the majority of people is significant and it is well known that the brain’s visual system, despite being largely robust in natural settings can easily be targeted for misinterpretation. This makes the fake content more believable for the spectators. Also, the creation of deepfakes is quite easier and at times involves expertise, extensive training, expensive hardware, and special software that demands professionals at work. However, the AI tools of today are exemplary in their production and creation of a vast pool of deep fake videos and images, that can be offered for the entertainment of the general public without significant investment into training, data collection, or even hardware or software.
AI technology manipulated videos and movies to garner a higher viewer base and that is why their popularity is gaining strength with every passing day. At this point in the discussion, you must be curious to understand how deepfakes are impacting organizations, governments, and individuals. It is a fact that every technology has an upside and a downside. The decision-makers and the stakeholders of the social media platforms are devising strategies to counter the challenges posed by the dark side of deep fakes in today’s times. Besides having the entertainment factor in place, deepfakes also pose a threat to the individuality of the personality in the treated video or image content drastically.
The intensity of the harm that these deepfake technologies have on society could be sensed from the fact that deepfake photographs can be used to create sock puppets (non-existent people) who are active both online and in traditional media. This poses a serious threat to the social media generation of today, who is forced to believe whatever is served on the internet in the name of entertainment. Several articles do the rounds on the internet without having an authenticated source and significantly diminishing the stature of eminent personalities for petty benefits.
In the words of former Google Fraud Czar Shuman Ghosemajumder,
“Deepfakes is an area of societal concern and will inevitably evolve to a point at which they can be generated automatically, and an individual could use the technology to produce millions of deep fake videos.”
As highlighted earlier, doctoring the content, visual as well as audio, is not new in the industry. However, recent developments in the deployment of deep learning mark the beginning of a new phase of content manipulation. Deepfake is still in its infancy. The literary form is brand new and full of potential, but there are a lot of opportunities to discover in terms of genres, storylines, and content creation. The top AI certifications earned by the learned AI professionals make the entire process of growth of the AI industry a lot smoother. Investing your trust and instinct in building AI technologies in strengthening literature with Deepfake Autofiction is the way ahead.
