Kerby Anderson

We have all heard the phrase, “seeing is believing.” Unfortunately, that is no longer true due to the technological advancements that make deepfakes so convincing. Two years ago, I wrote about how you could put someone’s face on a video the way you can use Photoshop or Lightroom to put a face on a picture of someone’s body.

In the past, it took cutting-edge video technology to accomplish this. Now, it is readily available and can even be purchased on the Internet. Michael Grothaus writes about this in his book, Trust No One: Inside the World of Deepfakes. His examples are a reminder that you shouldn’t even believe everything you see.

This technology can make it look like you commit a crime. This journalist asked a “deepfake for hire” to put together a clip of him committing a crime and was shocked to see how convincing the video was. He watched himself point a gun at a cyclist and told him to give up his backpack or die. It looked like his video-created-self would have killed the man if passers-by had not interrupted.

Deepfakes have been used to make an innocent person appear in porn. Actresses like Addison Rae and Scarlett Johansson have been targeted this way through deepfake technology. Although they have tried to fight back, it seems like a losing battle.

Some of the deepfakes are harmless. You can see Tom Cruise playing golf on TikTok. You can see Queen Elizabeth dancing and even flying through the air. Videos have been made of Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Boris Johnson, and Vladimir Putin.

Unfortunately, these videos can be manipulated to have you say or do things you would never say or do in real life. They could easily be used to damage your reputation and you could even lose your job. Sadly, I must agree with the title of the book: Trust No One.