Can Fake News Get Even Faker?

And are you ready for that inevitability?

With a shout out to media theorist Barry Vacker, founder of the Center for Media & Destiny, take a look at this new technology being created by game/virtual reality developers.

The technology allows the developer to manipulate the mouth and surrounding facial movements of an individual in a video, animating anew. In this video, you’ll see how it works with sources like former U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. (If you want to understand the finer technical points, check out this video.)

The speaker in the original video can be maneuvered in pretty compelling and lifelike ways so he/she appears to be saying something that is completely different from the original version.

Great for video games and virtual reality. Now, let’s extrapolate for real life. If governments can manipulate elections (and by the way, hasn’t the U.S. used propaganda to also influence other countries’ elections?) by creating fake news web sites and fake comments, what happens when the fakers start manipulating the speech of subjects in video? 

As we call for a commitment to our freedom of press, the pressure is on to each of us to check news sources carefully. Just because someone said it in a video doesn’t mean it’s true.

Pressure will also be on leaders to maintain transparency and safeguard digital assets to preserve individual and organizational reputations.

What could this technology mean for your organization?