“With deepfake, you can fake videos so hard that you don’t know what’s real and what’s not.” That’s what Birgit Van Mol says in the trailer of the Telefacts report about deepfake, which will be broadcasted on VTM tonight at 10.05 pm.
The message sounds disturbing and it is. “There is coming a time when our enemies can make anyone say anything at any time,” we hear the voice of ex-US President Barack Obama say. His voice, his mouth, but did he really say it himself? Deepfake seems to have been created just to be able to abuse it.
However, Telefacts also highlights other positive possibilities of heavily manipulated videos. For example, there are already experimental therapies to overcome fears and addictions. The aim is to create realistic-looking memories that never actually happened. You then see a different, future version of yourself, the version that is not addicted or has no fears, for example. In time, these types of treatments could develop into full-fledged therapies. And deepfake is already being accepted in the art and fashion world today.
Perfecting deepfake will undoubtedly make it almost impossible for us to distinguish real from fake in the future. Is what you see and hear still the truth? Is this happening here and now? Questions that we will ask ourselves more and more and that Telefacts is already raising tonight.