It has been roughly a year now since the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble took hold in both the tech world and associated financial sectors. While the utopian marketing push from those symbiotic industries has inevitably lost steam as tangible benefits fail to make themselves known to the average first-world citizen, the degree to which AI is becoming a corrosive aspect of online life and internet communications is only accelerating. Couple the concept of deepfakes with the ease of generating convincing AI content, and the very premise of media authenticity crumbles to dust.
From fake political ads to fake celebrity videos to fake business dealings, the historical moment has finally arrived when all sound and image from by any connected device must be considered inherently suspect. While celebrities, public figures and people in critical positions of authority are prime targets for the initial wave of fake media, the relative ease with which such content can be generated by artificial intelligence programs — which are themselves rapidly advancing due to market competition — means everyone is at risk. Whether you have a significant online presence or not, AI programs can repurpose your voice and likeness with relative ease, even at the direction of people who may not be particularly savvy about technology. Words you have never said and things you have never done can be convincing portrayed in a way that makes it all but impossible for you to deny involvement. But that’s only half of the problem.
Not only are fakes an affirmative threat, but the fact that convincing fakes exist means people who were actually caught on audio or video saying or doing something objectionable — including committing the most atrocious crimes — can now credibly argue that media evidence against them has been manipulated or falsified. This ubiquitous technological plausible deniability not only undermines communication and media broadly, but it makes journalism and law enforcement that much more difficult. While I anticipate an entire new regime of federal and state statutes to deal with the creation of fake content, proving that a specific audio or video file is genuine may soon be impossible.
Fortunately, here at Ditchwalk we don’t have those particular media vulnerabilities. Not only did I never jump on the video bandwagon — to say nothing of newfangled variants like YouTube or TikTok — but I don’t even use stock images to break up my posts, as SEO mavens insist I should. That said, however, there is still the question of chatbots and AI-generated text to address, so let’s do that.
There is not, and never will be, any AI-generated content on Ditchwalk, text or otherwise.
To make that symbolically clear I have added a graphic to the sidebar, and linked that graphic back to this post. While you may find similar graphics and sentiments around the internet, I would note that this particular image was created from scratch, and implies no association with any particular group or organization. (If you want to use that image on your own site, without claiming any legal rights, feel free.)
— Mark Barrett
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