In 1981 the critically unacclaimed Looker presented the story of a nefarious corporation digitizing and then murdering super models. This was, one assumes, to avoid having to pay them royalties. In many ways, this film was a leader in technology: it was the first commercial film to attempt to create a realistic computer-generated character and the first to use 3D computer shading (beating out Tron). Most importantly, it seems to be the first film to predict a technology for replacing real people with digital versions—and to predict that it would be used with nefarious intent.
While the technology for creating digital versions of real people is not yet perfect, it is quite good and will continue to be improved. While one might think that such creations would require the resources of Hollywood, the software to create such deep fakes is readily available—thus opening the door to anyone to create their own digital deceits.
As should be expected, the first use of this technology was to “deepfake” the appearance of celebrities onto the bodies of porn actors. While obviously of concern to the impacted celebrities, the creation of deepfake celebrity porn is probably the least harmful aspect of deepfakes. Sticking within the realm of porn, deepfakes could be created of normal people in efforts to humiliate them and damage their reputations (and perhaps get them fired). On the other side of the coin, the existence of deepfakes could enable people to claim that real images or videos of them are not real. One can easily imagine cheaters using the deepfake defense and the better deepfakes get, the better the defense. This points to the broad problem with the existence of deepfakes: when the technology is good enough and widespread enough, it will be difficult to tell what is real and what is deepfake. This is the core moral problem with the technology and its potential for abuse is vast. One obvious misuse is the creation of real fake news—videos of events that never occurred and recordings of people saying things they never said.
It can be argued that there are legitimate uses of deepfake style technology—think of movies and video games. This is certainly a reasonable point: if the people being digitized provide informed consent, this is merely an improved version of the CGI that has been used to recreate actors in movies and video games. However, this argument misses the point of the concern: it is not the technology that is the problem, it is the use to which it is put. To use an analogy, one can defend guns by arguing that there are legitimate uses (such as self-defense, hunting and target shooting) but this obviously does not defend homicides committed by using guns. The same holds for the deepfake technology: the technology itself is morally neutral, although it can clearly be used for evil ends. This makes it problematic to control or limit the underlying technology—even if it were possible to do so. One need merely think about how easy it is to acquire software from anywhere in the world to see that it would be almost impossible to control access to this technology—it would be on par, one imagines, with trying to prevent access to pirated movies and software. Because of this, limiting access is not a viable option to defending against deepfakes.
From a philosophical perspective, deepfakes present an epistemic nightmare worthy of the classic skeptics. While not on the scale of the problem of the external world (how do we know the allegedly real world is really real?), the problem of deepfakes presents a basic epistemic challenge: how do you know that the video is real and not a deepfake? The problem can be seen as having two parts. The first is discerning that a fake is a fake. The second is discerning that the real is real. Fortunately, the goal here is practical—we need not be certain, we just need to be sure enough. This, of course, does raise the problem of sorting out how confident we need to be in each situation—but this is nothing new: law and critical thinking have long addressed the matter of required levels of proof.
On the philosophical side, the old tools of critical thinking will still serve against deepfakes—although awareness of the technology will obviously be essential to applying such tools. For example, if a video appears of Mike Pence cruelly torturing his family’s pet rabbit, then it would be reasonable to conclude that this is a deepfake, especially if the real rabbit seems fine. Whatever one might think of his politics, Pence does not seem to be the sort of person who would do such a thing. There is also the general point that deepfakes do not create physical evidence and cannot (yet) be witnessed occurring in the real world—something that can be relevant to sorting out the real from the fake. Naturally, fully addressing the critical thinking needed to address deepfakes would require at least a book chapter—so I will not do so here. Such a work should, of course, include a discussion of how the possibility of deepfakes can be misused to argue that what is real is fake.
On the technological side, there will be an ongoing arms race between the software used to create deepfakes and the software used to detect them. One obvious concern is that nations will be working hard to both defeat and create deepfakes—so there will be plenty of funding for both. Actually, I suspect that countries like China and Russia will focus more on creating deepfakes than defeating them, mainly because they have considerable control of their media. In contrast, deepfakes will no doubt infest American social media soon—perhaps in time for the 2020 election.
This line of reasoning is interesting from a philosophical perspective, but I can’t help thinking that, in practical applications, “Who needs it?”
The nefarious entities who seek to delude the general public into believing fake news really have no need to go to such technological extremes to garner support for their positions, no matter how ill-founded. All they need is Facebook and Twitter, and a not-even-so-well-thought-out strategy to create Internet memes that leverage the deep-seated desire on the part of the great unwashed masses to cling to their tribal roots, and they need not go any further.
One glaring example is the very commonly held belief that Donald Trump supports White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and racists – which is bolstered by “Trump’s own words” when speaking about the issue of tearing down statues of Confederate soldiers in Charlottesville. The media, followed by the general public, were very eager to capitalize on Trump’s statement that “There are fine people on both sides” of the argument about these statues.
The full context of his comments, which is supported by his documented, direct condemnation of those racists, white supremacists, and anti-Fa protesters who sought only to incite violence, Trump gave an intelligent, well thought-out opinion of the situation, clearly stating that there are scholars, general historians, and military historians who understood the broad significance, in multiple analyses, of the people who were depicted in these statues that were condemned by the antiFa and others on the left.
What he said, which is backed by transcripts and video, is that the over-arching argument about the existence of these statues has support from intellectuals and historians on both sides. He specifically and categorically condemned members of any hate group expressing their position with any sort of violence or outspoken bigotry, or any individual expressing such hatred or bigotry, or any individual who committed acts of violence on either side in support of such hatred or bigotry. The recordings of his statements clearly bear this out.
All of this is a matter of record. Any story to the contrary has been debunked by a preponderance of recorded evidence to the contrary; Trump’s comments have been analyzed and scrutinized and interpreted in a multiplicity of ways – and it all comes down to the same thing – Trump supports the open debate about the historical significance of these statues, he refuses to make quick decisions before he knows all the facts, and he respects intellectual and scholarly arguments on both sides of the issue. And he categorically and vehemently condemns the white supremacists who offer nothing but bigotry in support of the statues, and the anti-Fa protesters who would respond to these white supremacists with violence.
And yet, the takeaway for the American public, which is supported by the media, is that Trump is a racist, a white supremacist, who believes that neo-Nazis and other white supremacy organizations are “very fine people”, and that he honors the tradition of slavery in the United States.
Anyone who has even scratched the surface of this issue knows the truth, knows the meaning of Trump’s comments, knows the broader significance of the debate as it pertains to American history, but those people are very few and far between. The majority of Americans cling to their core beliefs and refuse to even consider evidence that threatens those beliefs.
So I ask – “Who the F*** Needs Deep Fakes?” We don’t need to go to the trouble of digitally manipulating the content of the speeches or comments of politicians. We don’t need to go to the trouble of changing the video of their mouth and lip movements to try to sell the idea that they said something they didn’t. No one cares. All we need to do is read on our trusted Facebook feed that “Trump said X” and we’ll believe it to the core of our beings, looking no further, because our “friends” all agree.
I don’t know how many times I have said that the American public does not want to have to think – that critical thinking and pointed questioning exist in only rare instances that are the exception rather than the rule. More often than not the rank-and-file citizens of this country prefer to ignore any evidence that challenges their first-line beliefs – and in this context, digital manipulations and “deep fakes” are pretty meaningless.
Joe Biden has shamefully made this widely debunked belief about Trump’s support of white supremacy a central core of his campaign – capitalizing on what he knew to be the popular, but grossly incorrect interpretation of Trump’s comments, and ignoring the fact that this interpretation has been discredited and debunked over and over again, said,
“It was there [Charlottesville] on August of 2017 that we saw Klansmen and white supremacists and neo-Nazis come out in the open. Their crazed faces, illuminated by torches, veins bulging and bearing the fangs of racism. Chanting the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the thirties. And they were met by a courageous group of Americans, and a violent clash ensued, and a brave young woman lost her life. And that’s when we heard the words of the president of the United States that stunned the world, and shocked the conscience of this nation. He said there were “some very fine people on both sides.” … In that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I’d seen in my lifetime..
(Of course, the “same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the thirties” is now being expressed by people like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, but the Democrats in Congress are rushing to defend their revisionist history – knowing that the American public is not so likely to actually go back and read about political allegiances and the murder of Jews during WWII; rather, the smart money is on the belief that the Republicans are somehow to blame for their racist attitudes and inherent hatred for Muslims, women, and especially Muslim women. No fancy lip-syncing video trickery necessary).
This is all the evidence anyone needs that we don’t need deep fakes or any kind of philosophical approach to “What is Truth”? Biden’s statement is complete, unadulterated bullshit; the real facts are supported by transcripts and recordings, both audio and video, of the comments in real-time and subsequent interviews. And yet a politician like Biden, with a fleet of pollsters and strategists leading the way, has the unmitigated gall to promote that falsehood as a central theme of his presidential campaign, knowing the real truth as I present it here:
The Truth Just Doesn’t Matter
You can have all the believable evidence in the world, or you can have no evidence whatsoever. You can leverage the best technology of our time to prove a point, or you can just post a made-up story on Facebook. We absolutely live in a “Post-Truth” America – but it’s nobody’s fault except the American public’s, who are willing and eager to swallow whatever anyone makes up that supports their comfort-zone beliefs; God forbid that anyone should challenge those beliefs and require that people actually set them aside and do anything or read anything that wrests them from the warm embrace of their own tribe.
Before all of this technological threat to The Truth, back in 2005 there was one of the most negative smear campaigns in US Gubernatorial History when Jon Corzine and Doug Forrester went head to head for the governorship of the State of New Jersey. There was very little, if any, actual content to either campaign; both were content to simply smear the opposition with an incessant trail of stories of political corruption, dishonesty, malfeasance, criminality, sexual misconduct, and anything else that could be dug up about the opposition, with less focus on the “truth”, and more on “what will stick”.
In the end, polls indicated that the citizens of New Jersey not only didn’t care, but they didn’t believe any of it. Or, the “D’s” believed the stories about the “R’s”, and the “R’s” believed the stories about the “D’s”, but there was no logic or reasoning behind any of it. The vote came down to population demographics or “who looked better on TV”, but there was very little, if any, real investigation into the veracity of any of the accusations or their full context. The people simply did not, and do not, care.
When I was at that fancy boarding school during my high-school days (I knowI’ve said this before) we had a curfew at 9:45 when everyone was supposed to be in their dorms. Curfew violations were common, even rampant, because the campus wasn’t patrolled by anyone other than a few mildly retarded night watchmen, hired from a local institute more out of a policy of charitable outreach on the part of my school than any kind of measure of real “security”, which at the time was pretty unnecessary.
Nonetheless, teenage offenders were routinely nabbed by these intellectually disadvantaged and overly self-important guardians of our safety, who would routinely collect names and file reports to the office of the Dean of Discipline. And invariably, instead of giving up their own names, the offenders would offer up the name of a single hated classmate, who was the sorry target of all kinds of abuse and social shunning. And this poor guy was always in line at the dean’s office, unaware of the offenses of which he stood accused, waiting to learn of his unjust punishment founded only on lies and false accusations.
Until one day – he and the dean’s office realized that this poor soul was the unwitting target of an elaborate scam. The credibility of any accusations against him was called into serious question, and the dean began to err on the side of leniency; rightly believing that this guy was far more likely to be innocent than guilty.
Can you guess what happened next? Total freedom. This guy could get away with anything. His campus status quickly shifted from being the Brunt-Of-All-Pranks to a sort of campus hero – the guy who was immune to any and all accusations of misconduct, who could actually give his own name to the night-watchmen who caught him after curfew, and actually be believed when he stood in front of the dean and said, “It wasn’t me”.
And so goes the world of celebrity porn; I doubt anyone really believes that it’s Ivanka Trump or Ellen deGeneres in those hot Internet videos – but we all have our fantasies. (Well, I don’t, but I’m sure you guys do)., It’s the perfect out. “It wasn’t me”. And the technology, just like the predominant scam of a bunch of miscreant teens, makes the out entirely believable.
And so it will be with the definitive YouTube videos of politicians and celebrities absolutely positively saying things they never said. The technology itself, which previously offered conclusive proof, will now provide plausible deniability.
Not that any of that matters.
There are lots of fake videos on YouTube, so what’s a few more?
Here is one of my favorites: https://youtu.be/Oe3St1GgoHQ
On the one hand, you are right to point out that people have been effective at deceit since there have been people. So deepfakes just add a new tool to a well stocked tool shed. On the other hand, think of the impact of having a real-looking video of AOC taking a payoff from a green energy company or one of Trump colluding with the Russians.
Think of the impact of a fake dossier about Trump being compromised by the Russians – what disorder and enmity and distrust, and damage to the civil fabric of the US, it has created over the last couple of years. Because some people wanted to believe it.
It’s the wanting to believe that is the danger, not the faked evidence.
It’s the wanting to believe that is the danger,
Winner, winner, chicken dinner. As the kids say. There’s an X-Files FBI Agent Mulder meme begging to be exploited here.
DH, as usual, has said more than I can.
#DeepFakes is nothing new, just a technological advance on #Fakes and #Lies, trotted out as a new thing by people whose main job now is getting clicks.
The problem is not that people make up false evidence – they’ve been doing that since Biblical times, and before – but that some people are motivated to believe it without adequate questioning.
I recall back in the early ’90s explaining to a worker, that no, he had not won the Microsoft Lottery, and no, the fact that the “From:” field of the email confirming it had a @microsoft.com address did not prove anything!
More recently, haven’t we seen enough of real videos cut in just the right places to suggest a false story that was unthinkingly lapped up by people desperate to believe the narrative?
Computer professionals now have a new and specialised field of attack and defense to study, and we all need to learn to filter incoming allegations and apparent evidence accordingly. But it doesn’t change anything fundamental.