Fake News - It's No Longer Just What You Read, It's Now Also What You Watch
Fake news is no longer just what we read or hear that needs to be scrutinized - it's now extended to what we watch.
By now, you are probably more than aware of the fact that fake news or disinformation shared in the media is not an uncommon practice.
There has always been some level of interpretation of the news but outright false information started to emerge as a real concern in the 2016 US election.
This was then followed by the pandemic where 80% of consumers believed that they saw fake news related to this.
And false news doesn't come without issue.
Overall, 67% of people in the US believe that false news causes a great deal of confusion.
But it is now no longer just what we read or hear that needs to be scrutinized, there is now a new form of fake news on the scene. Referred as "deepfake", the artificial intelligence (AI) fake face and voice altering videos are now becoming a significant concern.
We are seeing evidence of this in the war between Ukraine and Russia. An altered video of President Zelensky was circulated where he was supposedly speaking from the presidential lectern and urging his countrymen to down their weapons in the face of Russian invaders. This particular video was completely false and reported to have been generated by Russian forces.
So what are we to believe and how can we spot these deepfakes?
The following video produced by Al Jazeera does a very good job of explaining what deepfakes are, how they are produced and how they are being used.
So as one of the experts in the video suggests, "...if something makes you feel a strong emotion, either really good or really mad, that's the time to take the extra second and check to see if it's real.".
