With technology advancing at rapid rates each year, we find ourselves closer to artificial intelligence. Although the development of artificial intelligence is to help improve human lives, it can also impact the growing trend of fake news.
A video created by comedian Jordan Peele and online news outlet Buzzfeed demonstrates how the advancement of AI can challenge the authenticity of news reporting. The video appears to show former president Barack Obama giving a one-minute speech in which he calls U.S. President Donald Trump “a total and complete dipshit”.
The real Obama didn’t say those thingsーPeele did. Peele used the latest AI technology to create visual data resembling the real Obama speaking but used his own voice to make it look like Obama was saying those comments in the Youtube video. It was basically a virtual representation of Obama.
Technological programs allow a person to type anything, and an AI version of someone else can repeat back what was typed. The ones specifically used for this PSA were Adobe After Effect and FakeApp. This demonstrates how easy it is for anyone to access this type of technology that can lead to deception.
“We have evolved to where technology is making us question even our most reliable sources with the rise of fake news,” said Mason Dallise, a UWG graduate who runs his own blog dedicated to sharing the challenges of technology. “To ensure that our information is concrete and true we should take the time to research sources in order to move forward. It’s imperative that people take it upon themselves to question everything in the news and media.”
Peele’s video demonstrates how easy it is to produce and send out misinformation to the masses. As shown in the video, the continuation of this can lead to a world of people being manipulated by technology.
“This is a dangerous time, moving forward, we need to be more vigilant with what we trust from the internet. It’s a time when we need to rely on trusted news sources,” said Peele at the end of the video. “It may sound basic, but how we move forward in an age of information is going to be the difference between whether we survive or we become some kind of fucked-up dystopia.”
Peele’s overall message from the video suggests this new age of fake news can become disastrous if source research is not conducted intensively.
