How Deepfakes are Accelerating Truth Decay

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The full version of this dispatch includes my response as a childfree woman being called "miserable cat ladies", a dive into the troubling autocratic beliefs of the billionaires that control our technological infrastructure, and mulling over that viral Australian breakdancing video.

Truth Erosion

Last week, as I scrolled through my news feed, I was confronted with a barrage of unsettling headlines. Racist riots had erupted in the UK, after an attack on young children was blamed on migrants, fueled by AI-generated images of a man in Muslim dress waving a knife outside of parliament, viewed over 900,000 times.

Over on X, Elon Musk had re-shared a deepfake containing misinformation about Kamala Harris. Welcome to our new reality, where seeing is no longer believing.

The proliferation of deepfakes isn't just a technological novelty – it's accelerating a phenomenon known as "truth decay." This erosion of agreed-upon facts is reshaping our social and political landscape, blurring the lines between reality and fiction at an alarming rate. As someone who's always prided myself on staying well-informed, I find this development deeply worrisome.

Let's unpack those earlier examples. In the UK, by the time the truth emerged – that the perpetrator was actually British-born – the damage was done. Streets had erupted in violence, fueled by a lie crafted in pixels. Meanwhile, Musk's sharing of the Harris deepfake demonstrated how even those at the highest echelons of power can fall prey to (or perhaps exploit) these fabrications.

The ripple effects of these incidents extend far beyond their immediate impact. They chip away at our collective ability to discern truth from fiction, to establish a shared understanding of events. It's a process that's been underway for years, but AI-generated content has supercharged it.

Even more concerning is how deepfakes are becoming a go-to tool in political warfare. Recently, Donald Trump accused Kamala Harris of using AI to lie about crowd sizes at her events. Whether this accusation is true or not almost doesn't matter – the mere suggestion plants seeds of doubt, further eroding public trust. (It's not true, by the way) These incidents highlight how prominently AI-generated content will feature in upcoming elections, potentially reshaping the very foundation of our democratic processes.

The EU AI Act is a start, but it's not enough. Not when there are so many people who would benefit from the erosion of our democratic processes. As a member of President Macron's commission, "Enlightenment in the Digital Age," our report highlighted the heavy risks that countries around the world face. (Read it here, in english)

Navigating this brave new world will require developing new literacies and a healthy skepticism towards the media we consume. We'll need to create new systems for verifying information and new ways of building consensus. The tools we've relied on for decades – photographic and video evidence – are becoming unreliable narrators in our collective story.

The challenge before us is monumental. How do we balance the incredible potential of AI with the need to preserve some semblance of shared reality? How do we harness these technologies for good while mitigating their potential for harm? And in a world where reality itself seems malleable, how do we anchor ourselves to truth?

These are questions we'll be grappling with for years to come. But one thing is clear: the future of our information ecosystem – and perhaps of democracy itself – depends on how we answer them. As we face this accelerating truth decay, our ability to discern fact from fiction and maintain a shared understanding of reality has never been more crucial.

The era of "pics or it didn't happen" is over. It's up to us to navigate this new landscape with wisdom, skepticism, and a renewed commitment to truth.

What have you seen lately?

I'm curious if you've seen any news articles of the impacts of deepfakes in your own country or industry. Let me know!