What will happen to the internet with the growing use of Deepfakes? Will it stop being a reliable source of information? From the “dividend of the liar” to the implosion of the “Self -Estradated of Information”, there are some theories.
“It’s easier to deceive people than to convince them that they have been deceived.”
Ironically, even this mythical phrase attributed to Mark Twain has possibly misleading origins: there is no evidence that it was the author who wrote it. When the internet appeared, it was said that it was going to be a “super highway of information”, and so it was. Today, there are those who say that the asphalt goes towards a dead end of misinformation.
For 10 years (or less), we would never think to be here, before the possible collapse of the truth itself. In the blink of an eye, the deepfakes They are everywhere: it has never been easier to create high quality images, sound and video so convincing, so “real”. Many of these contents, we can no longer say whether they are real or not. The “see to believe” is getting lost in artificial intelligence.
In Portugal, one in three Portuguese contacts daily with false or incorrect information and 81% admit to feeling concerned about their ability to identify true content on the internet. Wars (37%), policy (28%), economy and cost of living (19%) and immigration (17%) are the topics where they notice the most misinformation, according to the report “Let’s talk about misinformation” from the Portuguese psychologists (OPP), which concludes that false news can spread up to six times faster than a true.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asking his army to stop fighting and saying that Ukraine surrendered, early in the Russian invasion, was one of the first examples that scared the world. And feet cases such as giant social networks like Facebook, to reflect on the latest controversial example: images Ghibli stylenow with a subscription on chatgpt. Anyone who started to see anime today would believe that Hayao Miyazaki, in an example of hard dedication and hard work, took a year and a half to draw this scene of movement from a crowd, which on the screen, for our eyes, lasts only four seconds?
And when it comes to Deepfakes, AI will still improve its falsifications. How will we be able to check if what we are seeing, listening or reading is real? If it is true, in a world where journalism, which must be increasingly aware, is no longer the only one to inform the world?
With more and more false content and information, including, will we stop believing fully in what we see in screens? Will social networks become obsolete in the provision of information?
Of the “dividend of the liar” at the end of this internet
Thinking later, there are those who describe a future in which people will deny true evidence increasingly, claiming that what is before us is a deepfake -And vice versa. And the “Divide the liar”by investigators such as law teachers Danielle Citron and Robert Chesney. We will see real events to be considered false – and false events to be considered real.
Other experts the hypothesis that the Internet of the future is divided into “reliable” and “unhealthy” zoneswith very isolated communication ecosystems, while the rest of the internet will be seen as “outlaw”, “misfit“, A well of misinformation. We would have a fragmented internet,“ bombarded ”with protective technology and blockchains To authenticate digital content.
There are those who go further. The astrophysicist and scientific communicator Neil Degrasse Tyson provides “an internet in which deepfakes They are so good that even the people who believed that false news was real will no longer believe them, because they will think they are false. ”
“The day this happens will represent a implosion the integrity of information from the entire internet“, In conversation with Peter H. Diamandis: the internet“ will no longer be a source of objective information. ”This scenario will be “The bottom of the well” for the internetin another podcast. “Objective information on the Internet will no longer be valuable, because no one knows what objective information is.”
We would be before a New Age of Adaptationlike the one we live today. Perhaps, in the form of setback. “Let’s go back to books and physically talk to people,” anticipates the astrophysicist – a scenario that points out as possible in the next 5 years.
Other experts, more optimistic, ensure that the internet will not end, but will become increasingly difficult to use, and that we will all need help to know what is real. for example the combat of false content generated by IA with… IA, In a constant cat game chasing rat.
Can education for media literacy become a compulsory discipline in school? Are you trusted institutions such as museums, NGOs or universities, will you become sources of primary information again rather than channeling information through large media companies?
But if we cease to believe on the internet, I may lose its power to mislead, and false information creators stop doing so, at least this way. Perhaps this skepticism increases scrutiny by the reader. But there are also those who say people believe in what they want to believe, hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see.
Tomás Guimarães, Zap //
