The challenge of deepfakes – The daily blog of behavioral and cognitive economics

Why deepfakes pose less of a threat than many predict

The Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969 was an extraordinary scientific achievement. It was also an extraordinary epistemological achievement. Not only did a man walk on the Moon but, almost contemporaneously, much of humanity came to know via a live broadcast that a man had walked on the Moon. The event was a dramatic illustration of the epistemic power of video footage. Some argue that this power is imperilled in the age of generative AI. According to these commentators, tools for generating ‘deepfakes’ – highly realistic synthetic images or recordings – threaten to induce widespread deception and, over time, pervasive distrust of seemingly reliable footage. ….[READ]