According
to a recent article in The
Guardian, "AI images of people – such as women in military
contexts – are making money and serving as propaganda, researchers
say." More worrying is however: „‘They feel true’:
political deepfakes are growing in influence – even if people know
they aren’t real.“
We know or we should know, of course, that photographs have been manipulated from the very beginning of photography. The various attempts to somehow distinguish the true from the fake haven't been really convincing; in the end, the veracity depended on whether you trusted the photographer.
The presumption has often been that knowing the facts would free us from the dictatorship of our emotions. Not so, as the example above seems once adain to demonstrate. Differently put: Knowledge does not stand a chance against belief.
"Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is“, the Bhagavad Gita states. Only personel experience, it seems to me, stands a chance to challenge belief. And, needless to say, this is most definitely not good news.
