There’s been a lot of coverage in the news and tech podcasts lately about AI enabled deep fakes because of some recent deep fake porn videos of Taylor Swift and a deep fake robocall from Joe Biden to New Hampshire voters. Apparently AI can generate realistic fakes from publicly available video & audio clips that have been scraped by large language models.
So now, all the doomsayers are saying, “People cannot even tell what is real anymore – we must do something!”
By we, they mean tech companies, AI companies, social media platforms and the government.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for this to happen.
I have taken a different tact with what I see on the internet.
I assume everything is bullshit.
If a video is linked to a clickbait driven site, it’s fake. If it’s asking me for a donation, it’s fake. If it is used for political persuasion, it’s fake.
Or, at the very least, it is manipulated, edited and clipped to persuade me to take an action that puts my money in someone else’s pocket.
This is nothing new. Snake oil salesman have been around for a long time. I’ve written about this here, here and here.
The Internet, AI and deep fake software are just the latest platforms and tools employed by hucksters, grifters and trolls.
In earlier times they used gossip, then books, then newspapers, radio, TV, movies, seminars, direct mail, robocalls and whatever tools they could find.
Will I be hit with a deep fake scam someday? Undoubtedly. I’ve already been targeted with a scam email attempt that was slightly more sophisticated than the Nigerian Prince scam as well as innumerable automated phishing emails.Eventually, with AI being used to enhance spambots, I expect we will all be subjected to deep faked calls and videos from “family, friends and famous people”.
What protects me, regardless of the technology used, is that the people close to me never ask me for money and people not close to me will never get it. My natural level of suspicion and skepticism, plus my frugal hermit-like life provide inherent scam protection.
So, I don’t fear deep fakes. I expect them to be quite annoying – like pop-up ads, “we value your privacy” cookie warnings, ad targeting, spammers, robocallers and the like.
It’s up to you and me not to fall for any of them.
