And now it's time for synthetic media

A few weeks ago, the Internet was flooded with a campaign video – online privacy. Generally, it's about the fact that by publishing photos of ourselves and our children, or video recordings with a voice track, using artificial intelligence, we can manipulate reality. We can create unreal images not only based on photos or sound, but we can generate characters as they will be, for example, in 10 or 20 years.

But before I get to this problem, let's remind ourselves what the entertainment industry, mainly film, and the gaming industry, has led us to. We have observed such possibilities for a good dozen years or so. We remember how stunning graphics were presented by graphic studios using Silicon Graphics equipment. Films such as Jurassic Park or Interstellar with their interpretation of a dinosaur or black hole were very realistic. Of course, there is one detail in their case; none of us have seen a dinosaur or a black hole, so in fact, these films created our imaginations about them. And thanks to realistic animation and similarity to everyday physical laws (movement or color sets), our subconscious recognized them as true. They have become the standard to which we adjust other creations. If you think about it, pop culture is full of patterns considered true but actually coming from a film studio. Thanks to computer animations of these "created images," we can quickly see galaxy collisions, the big bang, or jump to superluminal. Visualization of the structure of an atom or blood cells in our blood or the appearance of viruses and bacteria surrounds us from every side. Thanks to computer games, the imagination of graphic designers, and perfect execution, our minds have built up the course of a hydrogen bomb explosion, a 360-degree view of a missile's flight path, or the course of knight sword fights in the 12th century. But do we realize that most of these images are completely untrue? They are as false as images of angels or saints painted on church walls or depictions of the devil and God from medieval books. So how is synthetic media different today? And why do we talk more and more loudly about this issue as a problem?

We are dealing with two issues, or rather, problems:

1. Creation is carried out using artificial intelligence based on a real, existing object,
2. The created object can realistically react to changing environmental conditions; it's interactive.

Twenty or thirty years ago, only multi-million dollar film productions could afford to create synthetic dinosaurs or terminators. Today, anyone can create at least the same quality characters (or objects). However, the purpose of such a generation becomes problematic. Historically for entertainment or education. Deliberate deception, as we have established, served to soothe imaginations. Today, besides entertainment, there is a strong desire to increase communication efficiency (a naturally looking bot will perform better than a low-quality cartoon character), but also the temptation for illegal or even criminal actions. Synthetic media used for this purpose can cause a lot of confusion today. Current legal procedures, directing audio and video materials to forensic laboratories, operate within a few to several dozen cases per month. The number of advanced media manipulation cases is still not high. What will happen, however, when these cases will number in the thousands or tens of thousands daily thanks to AI? We will probably use the same technique as the criminals for manipulation, but a revolution in this area will be necessary. However, I am thinking about another aspect of this revolution. To what extent will we be able to believe in what we see and what is presented to us? Today, I look at photos from my youth, and I know they reflect reality; I know these events took place. Our brain works so that it adjusts memories to the currently presented facts. So it can often add a story that didn't take place. You could say it plays a cognitive trick on us. If we start living in a world of synthetic media, and I'm not talking about images of dinosaurs, terminators, or nuclear explosions, but changes in how we looked (filters on social media) or what we did (fabricated photos or clips from exotic island vacations), not only will we deceive ourselves and our loved ones today, but we will believe in the future that it was true a fact. The problem of modification through AI may be one of the biggest challenges we face for another reason; there is social acceptance and consent to this modification. We do not see abuse in it. What's more, "beautifying" reality is already an irreversible process. In the coming years, we will accept further steps in falsifying reality, in the name of innocent fun, entertainment, or jokes. Just as we give up our privacy for free mail, social media accounts, or participation in a quiz, we will agree to hand over biometric data for the price of permanent makeup, a concert film where we weren't, or a postcard from a 5-star hotel vacation. And we know that today our sold privacy turns against us, but imagine how sold biometry can turn our lives into a nightmare.