After creating technology – used over years, if not decades in entertainment industry – to produce deep fakes – how about the same industry now warning us about all the dangers of it – and their brand new solutions for that problem, some of them may have ostensibly created in the first place?
There might be an audience for it.
Particularly that which believes the idea that most people these days “live their lives online” – not true, as far as most people are concerned. Sure, online services like banking and chatting are handy – but to “live” a life online is a whole different proposition.
Then, there’s the throwing in of the term, “Artificial Intelligence” (AI) around, when anybody with even superficial knowledge of this technology knows that these days we are VERY removed from what mainstream media make it seem like, or likely to achieve (the best “AI” can now offer is a feeble subset called, machine learning, ML).
All that aside – the Times of London seems to ask you to toss all your knowledge, skepticism, and experience aside, and go with the story – as in, “never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
And so, we learn about “entrepreneurs inventing digital ID defenses.”
Good for them. But why? The idea of “digital identity” is quickly enough introduced as a way to combat these supposed ills.
The Times’ readership may not know it – because the outlet, being a poster child for legacy media, may have never explained it to them. But in those quarters where advanced tech and individual privacy is taken seriously, digital IDs have been frowned upon for a very long time.
The Times’ piece, by promoting a UK digital ID company, Yoti, seeks to basically confound it all as a zero-sum-game: either you are in favor of age verification for sites, or you are a lover of hateful deep fakes.
Of course the dilemma could never be that simplistic, but the piece clearly has its own agenda by promoting not only the biometrics collecting company, but also fear mongering, in case the fears don’t take over.
“The entrepreneur believes that within five years, spoof videos and voices will be so easy to produce, and so widespread, that everyone will need digital IDs to prove the authenticity of their content online,” the report said, citing Yoti CEO Robin Tombs.
Now – why would an ID and age verification company CEO ever make such a statement? /s
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