Now that the public knows broadly that digital manipulation is easy and they have seen it with their own eyes a ton things like that are believed less. Notice I do say less though, we still definitely have problems with misinformation being propagated with shitty-looking video/audio/photos that people should not believe in because they look/sound so inauthentic.
All that to say, these tools clearly exist. I think the public is better served by them being pervasive and well-known rather than having them be locked up in Hollywood studios, research labs, and government agencies.
It may be worthwhile to have someone create a bunch of deepfakes of politicians saying "This video has been faked" to drive awareness of this as a threat model.
E: Forgot the key bit, it would need to be spammed all over Facebook/Instagram/Mainstream social media.
In a perfect world, what should have happened was a separate team inventing a reasonably accurate deepfake detector to the world before the deepfake producer gained prominence (differential technological development), but interest, productivity and excitement on the researchers' part to release their work first seems to have foiled that.
That may not be a fair comparison. Nuclear weapons are difficult to make, and using them will not go undetected - the damage would be enormous. Deep fakes are a real threat today, and anyone willing to pay for the expertise (which isn't that hard to find) can have them made. By putting this out there, deepfakes are now something almost anyone can make which means the threat is imminent and needs to be addressed. I understand the argument, but still not sure about it. Just wanted to say it's different than nuclear weapons.