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A photo shows a frame of a video generated by a new artificial intelligence tool, dubbed "Sora", unveiled by the company OpenAI, in Paris on February 16, 2024. Stefano Rellandini/AFP via Getty Images
While there’s an obvious negative impact of deepfakes—making people believe things that aren’t real—there’s also a flip side to that problem, warns Nicole Shackleton, a law lecturer at RMIT University in Melbourne.
As awareness of inauthentic media grows, a sceptical public “will be primed to doubt the authenticity of real audio and video evidence,” allowing people caught in the act of wrongdoing to muddy the waters by claiming the image or video isn’t real.
“They are able to allege that images or videos of them engaging in criminal activity, sexual harassment, or racism are in fact ‘fake’ and generated by technology to damage their reputation,” Shackleton explained.
The risk has been heightened by the release last month of OpenAI’s Sora 2, which can create convincing videos from any text prompt, quickly became the most downloaded product on Apple’s U.S. app store.
Equally as quickly, the technology was turned on its creator to produce viral videos of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shoplifting or wearing a Nazi uniform, highlighting its more sinister potential.
Even the supposedly more tech-savvy younger generation have been shown they’re able to be fooled into believing Sora-generated videos just as readily as their elders.
Meanwhile, Fox News has had to issue an embarrassing correction after running a story in which its reporters mistook Sora creations as real people complaining about cuts to welfare.
While OpenAI watermarks Sora’s output, services that remove them are readily available, making it easy to pass off videos as real.
But the increasing realism of AI generated images and video is not only eroding our ability to trust image-based media, making it easier to fall for fakes; it also allows people to weaponise doubt to avoid accountability for their actions, warns Shackleton.
Legal scholars have dubbed this problem the “liar’s dividend,” with a recent article in the California Law Review arguing that liars become more credible as awareness of inauthentic media grows because a sceptical public “will be primed to doubt the authenticity of real audio and video evidence.”
“The damage may extend to, among other things, distortion of democratic discourse on important policy questions; manipulation of elections; erosion of trust in significant public and private institutions; enhancement and exploitation of social divisions; harm to specific military or intelligence operations or capabilities; threats to the economy; and damage to international relations,” the authors warn.
This image made from video of a fake video featuring former President Barack Obama shows elements of facial mapping used in new technology that lets anyone make videos of real people appearing to say things they've never said. The Canadian Press/AP
Even before Sora’s latest release, there were attempts to dismiss real videos as “deepfakes,” such as when lawyers for Tesla tried to cast doubt on Elon Musk’s exaggerated claims of the carmaker’s advances in autonomous driving by claiming a video of him might have been altered, or when former South Australian Opposition Leader David Speirs tried to discredit footage that showed him snorting a white substance.
And in a corollary to the problem, some people are now finding it harder to convince others that they really did what they claim.
OpenAI introduced new rules around the use of digital recreations of people without their consent after complaints from actor Bryan Cranston and the U.S. actors’ union. The platform now promises greater enforcement of its rule that requires people to opt in before their likeness can be used.
But that applies only to the living, leaving people free to create videos misrepresenting history and distorting the legacies of public figures.
For instance, there is now an entire Instagram account dedicated to speeches that John F. Kennedy never actually gave, all created by Sora.
The family of Martin Luther King Jr. successfully pushed for Sora 2 to block his likeness on Oct. 17, but others have not been as fortunate. Before the intervention, videos showed King saying crude, offensive or racist things, stealing from a grocery store, speeding away from police, and perpetuating racial stereotypes.
But Sora-generated videos of Malcolm X still depict the civil rights activist wrestling with MLK, talking about defecating on himself, and making crude jokes.
OpenAI now says authorised representatives of the dead can now “request” that the person’s likeness not be used, but has also said that this is limited to the “recently deceased.”
The California Law Review warns that, “The capacity to create deep fakes comes at a perilous time. No longer is the public’s attention exclusively in the hands of trusted media companies.
Individuals peddling deep fakes can quickly reach a massive, even global, audience, leading to what the authors describe as “the viral spread of falsehoods and decay of truth.”
Rex Widerstrom is a New Zealand-based reporter with over 40 years of experience in media, including radio and print. He is currently a presenter for Hutt Radio.
