I mean, maybe deep fakes are _better_ at sowing distrust of information than other forms of propaganda but it seems disingenuous to treat it completly differently.

The reason I submitted this was largely because of something mentioned early on in the article:

"When it comes to disinformation, the Pentagon should not be fighting fire with fire,” Chris Meserole, head of the Brookings Institution’s Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative, told The Intercept. “At a time when digital propaganda is on the rise globally, the U.S. should be doing everything it can to strengthen democracy by building support for shared notions of truth and reality. Deepfakes do the opposite. By casting doubt on the credibility of all content and information, whether real or synthetic, they ultimately erode the foundation of democracy itself.”

This rang especially true to me. It's not really about whether its better or worse, but about the path that we're pursuing. The endgame of "information warfare" is not that people all believe you, but that nobody believes anything from anybody - including you.

That’ll work for maybe a week, unless the US government has a significant lead in deepfake technology, which seems unlikely.

Once deepfakes become that widely feasible, people will post them on the internet for general amusement or other frivolous motivations all the time, and no one will take video at face value anymore.

One can ask ChatGPT to make them. There's tons of public and private photo, video, and audio data for fine-tuning/customization. It is really that simple now. Yay...

We already have a semi famous daily show here in France where they are using deepfakes of our president and other powerful people as an humorous take on the current political situation.

https://youtu.be/ampFHEXawUY

It’s quite well done and I think it proves your point: general amusement, and now face value doesn’t work anymore.

That’s ready happened: https://youtu.be/NTWsUMDSqcg

(Not safe for work. Not pornographic, just not appropriate for workplace.

People already take Facebook memes and Youtube videos of godawful CGI spaceships and "reptoids" and other such nonsense seriously all the time. Deepfakes don't need to become widely feasible or even that good to be effective. Hell, deepfakes are all over Youtube now. US Presidents as shittalking gamers is a whole genre.

You're assuming most people are rational, skeptical, and won't trust anything that doesn't have a valid chain of evidence or proof of validity behind it. That's incorrect - most people believe that about themselves, but still tend to take anything they're shown at face value if it aligns with their preconceptions and there is no emotional or social risk in doing so.

They use them already.

Is video an evidence that can hold its weight in court?

Deepfaked videos and voices etc... Video evidence won't mean anything in the future.

So then what?

ChatGPT, where is the next "revolution"? Tell me so I can stay away.

It feels so miserable that we make important life and financial decisions based on video content.

As opposed to written content or audio content?

Life is difficult if you cant trust anything

Ideally decisions should be made based on espionage, reconnaissance, and advisors fluent in the domain. They're unavailable to precariat unfortunately.

But then how do you trust your advisors? The issue still remains that life is difficult when you can’t trust anyone.