I think the cons are going to heavily outweigh the pros with this tech.
Fake news on high octane race gas.
Fake news on high octane race gas.
If you think this won't attract huge investments from VCs, you are likely too optimistic.
* Everyone can access it. Not just sophisticated actors anymore
* It might make us rethink the entire "truth" chain, on how we source our information
Of course, the two go hand-in-hand, but the latter point is overdue: while video is perhaps more glaring, it's something that's needed in a lot of other areas as well (text -- news articles, messages, mail; sound -- phone calls, etc; image -- photoshop, though we start to get used to it).
I agree that provenance could become more important, but I don't see it changing how memes spread. For a lot of people it's just entertainment and they don't care whether it's true.
I think parent was making a point that once this tech is in the hands of the common man, it's value for sophisticated players might diminish strongly. Same way as an undisclosed 0day in a high value target (say IOS), is extremely valuable. Once it gets disclosed and everyone knows about it, people can come up with workarounds and eventual fixes, rendering the threat basically defanged.
I'm leaning towards the same school of thought. I'd rather see this tech widely accessible and hence all video/picture material henceforth considered completely untrustworthy, than living in the misguided notion that video evidence is trustworthy.
This is why I am all for the current hype and the apps. Everyone that has access to electronic media should now that videos are now more easily to manipulate than ever. This undermines the attack vector of supporting fake news with fake videos. (At least it should, I do not know about the psychological side of it. Maybe even knowledge of a video's falsehood does not diminish its impact that much. Still I think it is best to make video fakeability common knowledge.)
On the flip side, this enables revenge porn deepfakes and person to person harm on a much, much more common level. If you are someone who becomes briefly famous on the internet, expect that a TON of harmful or disturbing videos of "you" will show up in short order. I'm not sure we have good regulations and laws in place to protect people against the misuse of this tech yet.
There's not a single thing in the chain of tools and knowhow required to produce this that can be kept out of the hands of malicious actors.
The best course of action now is to rapidly educate people of the implications and hope that the initial wave of abuse will be without too many casualties.
Now, when you see a before and after photo, or an advertisement, the default is to assume it has been manipulated. That change came about with broad access to once-rare tools.
Why do you like this?
Basically, a (good) deepfake was out of reach for all but a few until recently, so if some bad actor with money and resources wanted to fake a video they could do it and few people would even think it could be faked.
Nowadays, the bar is way higher for this, as every video can be suspect.
But how many will suspect them? If 10 million people watch a video but only (generously) 1 million people think or are at least willing to consider it may be fake, that is very effective disinformation. We have to remember that the average person (especially in older generations) is likely unaware that this sort of technology is possible and easily accessible.
https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2019/08/darpa-taking-d...
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/30/deepfakes-fake-videos-darp...
...The consensus seems to be that ongoing detection is going to be a challenge as the tech evolves. I suppose that is like anything though....
Bereavement. It won’t be for everyone, but perhaps some people who have lost loved ones might like to feel that they are still alive by bringing them into modern day videos.
Fantasies. You hear about how some people like to live out fantasy lives in video games. I heard one about a severely disabled teen or young man who gets to be a big strapping strongman in his favorite video game. Imagine an old lady who can create a video of herself at age 25 free soloing El Capitan by deepfaking herself into an Alex Honnold video.
No, this tech will be used to amuse and/or influence the intellectually challenged.
Can you think of many recent examples of video evidence was the sole evidence in a news report?
So to do this pro/con analysis you probably need to include the pros of these related technologies as well, which are certainly more than trivial amusement.
Like the time my uncle (by marriage) sent a JibJab to the whole family featuring 4 recently-dead family members... real big pro, I'm sure... /s
Could also make for some interesting low-budget book commercials/trailers where authors (or I guess anyone making a video starring people) can design the characters in a video without worrying about what actors are available and/or what CGI costs.