As someone who likes to make photographs I am always interested in how people around me are using cameras. Recently I have been observing that in a way we are already living in an augmented synthetic world. What I mean is, the majority of people going, for example, to my cities harbor side park, do not go and look at the scenery with just their own eyes, or just spend time etc with those they came with, they go with cameras and take photos of themselves, they look at the photos they took of each other together. They see a synthetic version of themselves augmented by computational photography code of their phones, or the beautifying filters of their apps, reflected back at themselves, and their experience of their life, their memory of their visit of that place becomes one of augmented reality.
Some people could argue that there is some damage to people by expecting to see a beautified version of your own face, or to always feeling a need to produce images to send to Social media networks, other could argue that this is just part of changing societal norms and that those augmented experiences are still authentic.
I feel like the line between fake/real authentic/unauthentic is going to move and warp in ways I can't even envision. Maybe just thinking in terms of fraud is a bit easier.
In this article, the FTC has warned businesses to consider the potential harm their synthetic media or generative AI products could cause before offering them to the market. These recommendations given by the FTC seem to be targeted towards moral people who don't need this advice in the first place. Bad actors who are intentionally using AI tools to cause harm are unlikely to adhere to these guidelines.
There's going to be so much shilling and spamming in the near future. The Dead Internet is coming. Five years from now there won't be any point to online commenting sites like HN and reddit because you know most of the other posters are bots trying to push an agenda.
I think giving the law serious teeth in deepfakes will solve some of the problem, like with blatant copyright violation that is straight up fraud and theft. Those laws exist and function. It’s not brazen theft if we are being nuanced and honest. I think if we charge deepfake tech designed and used for fraud as fraudulent activity in the same way, we would be able to stunt adverse development or usages of these tools. So I for one am happy about this article and think they’re going in the right direction. Penalize fraud as fraud. It’s still fraudulent activity.