Thought about this from seeing this Deepfake of the Queen dancing. For all the scaremongering, deepfakes haven’t been properly used.
We haven’t seen any deepnudes released of politicians, that one AOC thing a while back aside. We haven’t seen any deepfakes of Trump calling for a race war. We haven’t seen deepfakes of Bill Gates confessing to infecting everyone with 5G, or Biden confessing to being a corporate stooge.
What gives?
since when do qanon freaks ever care what's real or if people say stuff is fake
it's still weird to me they aren't making and touting deepfakes that support their insanity
the same reason photoshop didn't ruin society, people who believe bullshit don't need proof
The social control functiom of deepfakes isnt to make you believe false evidence but to make everyone suspect true evidence.
Biden confessing to being a corporate stooge
Yeah we don't really need a deepfake for that. 'Nothing will fundamentally change' and all that...
Our epistemology isn't quite cracked to the point where you can rewrite history with fabricated videos. Photoshop didn't shatter our grasp on reality and neither will deepfakes.
There was a deepfake political scandal in india within the past year iirc
https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgedjb/the-first-use-of-deepfakes-in-indian-election-by-bjp
They don't look real enough even with huge amounts of training data.
A buncha reasons I think, though I reckon we might start to see more and more of it in the years to come. Firstly, you don't need to. Look at how many people believe the most obviously manufactured bullshit about anything you care to name. The kind of people who would believe Bill Gates is putting microchips in Covid vaccines don't need a deepfaked video to 'prove' it.
Secondly I don't think we'll ever really see it used in the way you describe, e.g. putting one person on the spot. Those sort of attacks are always hinged on making someone prove a negative. 'No I never said that and here's a buncha computer scientists we asked to test the footage and it's fake' is too easy an answer. Sure I can see something like that crop up on some boomer facebook group but the people who'd believe it wouldn't need the video to convince them.
Deep fakes might some day form part of a much larger propoganda effort, I dunno maybe if the tech had been around in the early 00's then a deepfake 'smuggled footage' of Iraqi scientists making sarin or something might have formed a very small part of a bigger push.
