The Era of Deepfakes is Here

Ignore that reality at your peril, because they can make you say anything. From Samizdata: Believe or disbelieve individuals, not the camera

Both today’s Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday carry the story of an ordinary woman whose life was nearly ruined by an AI-edited version of some doorbell footage that falsely showed her uttering racist abuse. The Mail’s story is here. It has the original video without a paywall, but I had started writing this post using the Sunday Times version before I was made aware by commenter JuliaM that the Mail had the same story, so in what follows I will mostly quote the Sunday Times story, ‘I doorknocked for Labour then racist deepfake ruined my life’. An archived version can be found here.

Cheryl Bennett was delivering leaflets for a political candidate, when she met Akhmed Yakoob. He had security camera video of their interaction, and he edited that video using AI video tech to create a Deepfake wherein Bennet was saying raaaaacit things. The candidate that she was supporting? His name is Quasim Mughal, so obviously she is not a racist. That didn't seem to matter.

Yakoob posted a narrated version of the fake video on TikTok. He also posted Bennett’s name and place of work.

It nearly cost her job, and police arrived to arrest her at 2:30 in the morning, but she was at a friend's home.

It took a while, but the truth eventually came out. Yakoob has since paid a price for this.

Even if she had been guilty, I do not see why the police thought it was necessary to turn up at that hour to arrest a woman for a non-violent crime.

Because the cops in the UK - well, not only in the UK - are drunk on the power of controlling what you think and say.

Go read the whole thing, and remember... Seeing, is no longer believing.