The term ‘deepfake’ has only been around a couple of years, but there is a lot of interest — good and bad — in it’s potential.
What’s a deepfake? It’s a fake image or video produced using artificial intelligence. Feed enough data into an algorithm, and it will learn to create eerily realistic fabrications of whatever it was trained on.
You might have seen some instances of this — Barack Obama saying something he’d never say. An app that gives you a glimpse of what you’ll look like when you get old. Or one persons’ face superimposed onto someone else’s body.
These are just a few of the many ways this technology has already been applied, but they raise number of questions about the future.
How might deepfakes affect society? Will uncertainty and doubt swallow all internet media? Or will we somehow grapple with fake content and establish some semblance of truth and trust? Will we at least get a good laugh out of it?
Pre-Deepfake
In 2016, one year before the term deepfake would first be used, FaceApp was released.
The app has a variety of options for altering your selfie, such as adding glasses, applying makeup, or changing the colour of your hair.
What caught people’s attention, however, was its ability to create realistic…
