Deepfakes

Deepfakes are media (videos or audio) that mimic reality so well your eyes/ears can't tell the difference. Usually it involves real people or real scenarios - AI generates fake videos about these real people/scenarios and they appear so real that our natural eyes can't distinguish fact from fiction. Though they can be entertaining (Have you seen any of the Will Smith eating spaghetti stuff?), they can also be problematic. The focus is typically trickery over entertainment. You're not just trying to make something fake seem real, you're trying to make someone believe that something happened that didn't.

• Actors playing roles they never actually played and Performers at concerts that never happened ("Ghost" celebrity endorsement, identity theft).

• Politicians saying/doing things they never said/did. (political sabotage)

• Political riots that paint an inaccurate portrayal of that party (fabricated civil unrest).

• Footage of historical events that never occurred (historical revisionism)

• Students/peers/colleagues "caught on tape" doing things they never did (nudification, slander, academic performance spoofing)

• Medical professionals encouraging you to buy products - but they're not actually medical professionals (Deepfake doctors)

• Phone calls about family in trouble and in need of money, but the family member's voice is a voice clone (Ransom scams, voice clones)

Deepfakes create an Erosion of Trust. When you can no longer trust what you see, what do you trust in? If you can't tell fact from fiction, how do you determine whether something actually happened or not? Fake videos are questioned as real, and real videos are questioned as fake. - and that's what makes this twice as hard. The "liar's dividend" is a benefit to dishonest people - they can claim that their misconduct isn't real - it's AI generated (even though it really wasn't). They now escape accountability until proof of the reality of the video is made. 

With deepfakes, you run the risk believing a lie and of doubting the truth.

Can you tell the difference between a real person's voice and AI?

• staysafeonline.org - Safeword

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• NY Times - Cascade of A.I. Fakes About War With Iran Causes Chaos Online (Mar, 2026)