Opportunities & Challenges
Opportunities
Creating high quality media faster
The input from an educator can be as simple as a few sentences in a prompt to generate a video that offers an engaging medium for the learner.
It also creates an environment where educators can develop educational materials at scale. If the content created by synthetic media is validated by an educator to ensure the material aligns with the learning outcomes, this can make the production of content more agile to apply in a variety of learning environments.
Flexibility and personalization
The versatility of synthetic through multiple forms of representation in text, images, audio, and videos opens opportunities for it to be applied in a number of settings.
The role of mobile technologies provides a roadmap to how synthetic media can expand.
Beyond just sitting at a computer, mobile phones, tablets, and wearable technology align with the adaptability of the synthetic media to apply it in a variety of situations.
Challenges
The risk of deepfakes
The term "deepfake" originated in 2017 and is a subset of synthetic media. From 2022 to 2023, this type of synthetic media increased online tenfold and research continues to raise questions about the degree to which farm can be directly attirbuted to deepfakes (CNTI, 2024, para. 2).
While this could also be viewed as an opportunity to save costs in producing realistic media, it also create the element of distrust. In cases where the generation of this media is unintentional, it can mislead individuals into believing something is true when it is not, and there is even more risk when synthetic media is purposely used to spread misinformation.
This is compounded by the use of mobile technologies when the message is disseminated faster than the truth to correct wrong information.
Privacy issues
A major criticism of synthetic media is the risk in privacy. Not only in using the likeness of someone’s image, but an individual’s writing style and voice pattern to simulate a person without their recognition.
Mobile Affordances for Synthetic Media
Accessibility and reach
The reach of synthetic media through mobile devices and applications is frequent and convenient enough that it’s created a space for this kind of media to grow.
Engagement
Leveraging features such as touchscreens, sensors, cameras, and haptic technology on a mobile device, the use of synthetic media can become optimized. It provides multiple ways for a learner to interact with the media and also offers an opportunity for the educator to gather feedback what is resonating with learners through their engagement.
Personalization of content
Personalization of content based on algorithms is one area, where if you select a dog video, often times there will be dozens of dog videos following. The mobile experience is especially tailored to behaviours and preferences. In an educational context, combining the use of synthetically generated microlearning and tailoring content based on a learner’s interest is an area of particular interest.
Content can be created quickly and through an educator validating the material before it becomes accessible to the learner, high quality material can be produced in a fraction of the time.