A New Report Warns that AI Can't Save Us From Deepfakes

It could serve to concentrate more power, and data, in the hands of big tech corporations.

The study authors say that deepfakes are very unlikely to be fixed solely by technology. “The relationship between media and truth has never been stable,” the report says.

As examples, the study cites the way courts mistrusted photographic evidence in court when it was first allowed by judges in the 1850s. In the 1990s, reporters misrepresented the uneven death toll between U.S. and Iraqi forces in the Gulf War, making it feel like an evenly fought war.

“These images were real images,” the report authors write. “What was manipulative was how they were contextualized, interpreted, and broadcast around the clock on cable television.”

Deepfakes aren't going away

“The panic around deepfakes justifies quick technical solutions that don’t address structural inequality,” Paris told The Verge.

“It’s a massive project, but we need to find solutions that are social as well as political so people without power aren’t left out of the equation.”

Paris and Donovan believe that focusing on technical fixes means that legislative changes aren't made to help those that are under the biggest threat of being manipulated. 

Unsurprisingly, they are suspicious of the idea that big tech corporations, so many of which have recently been at the center of huge data and privacy scandals, are going to save us from mass manipulation via a new technology.