Age of AI

    AI is developing at an insane rate for our society, and with its development come fears of job loss, privacy and data loss, and fear of personal duplication. For me my greatest fear when it comes to AI technology is deepfaking, which according to The Guardian's Article What are deepfakes – and how can you spot them? Is when a person uses “a form of artificial intelligence called deep learning to make images of fake events.” The uses for deepfake’s span from funny short meme clips all the way to rated R material, that of which most people don’t consent too.

    Just look at the following video of Anderson Cooper, the first portion is a clip from a news segment he was talking in and the second is a deepfake of him. The resemblance is uncanny and made me uncomfortable even watching. While obviously the video tells you it is fake but it still feels real. AND this video is just an “example” it is just there to show people online the capabilities of AI. 

    TikToker Michel Janise, is just one person who as well has experienced the harmful side effects of deep fakes. The video below was posted on her platform. She discusses how a company attempting to promote erectile dysfunction medication used one of her videos to create a deepfake advert for their product. She describes the ad by stating that “The ad was me in my bedroom in my old apartment, wearing my clothes, talking about their pill, the only thing is, it wasn’t my voice.”  

    The company actively chose to use her likeness in such an extreme way to promote the product and then this commercial was seen by her family and friends. Janise finishes the video by warning her fellow online users, stating that “because we are now entering this era of living our lives online to where we need to question everything we see because someone that, you know, could be in a video saying something to you. Looks exactly like them. And it could be completely fabricated.” I couldn’t agree more. 

    While the video did not touch too much on the topic of deepfaking in class, anytime I think of AI technology my mind races to the dozens, hundreds, and thousands of victims to this deep learning technology. I also hope to see a stronger reaction or disciplinary reaction to the companies or individuals who do use this technology to create harmful content like this.