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Comment by mrarjen | Hacker News Reader

Most people cant't even see that the Onion is satire... Half baked fakes are already far more difficult to spot.

I have yet to see concrete examples of any of this from family members, friends, or relatives. People believe what they want to believe so I am sure plenty of people are "tricked" because they see some half-ass adulterated content trying to pass itself off as the truth, that they want to believe is real. In the end that's a question of belief not a question of ability.

I remember seeing examples from conflicts where video from another event was passed off by the mainstream media to spin the story. It was not until it was called out because people found the real source and posted it debunking what was shown.

I expect more or less the same process with deep fakes. Find the source material and then show how it was adulterated to produce the fake.

Something even reaching mainstream media is already too far down the line, making the tools to nip this in the bud before it reaches mainstream would be quite valuable in my opinion.

You should check out the 'atetheonion' subreddit

Most people can tell that the Onion is fake, but given that there are millions of people out there and even the smartest of us have our off days, you're going to see people falling for it all the time. It's as much a numbers game as people being gullible.

Agree, everyone thought the "grab her by the..." soundbite was going to sink Trump, but it didn't really do anything.

I'd be far more terrified if there were an AI capable of generating genuinely catchy/hilarious/original meme images. The "original" part is the hardest part of the equation, because even if you managed the "catchy/hilarious" part (which is already almost impossible), the novelty of the results would wear off quickly if the machine isn't capable of true originality.

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