Experts warn that deepfake AI has created fake humans “more trustworthy” than real humans as the world faces a new technological arms race

NONE of the people in the picture at the top of this article can be trusted.

They look like everyone you can see in the store and are almost indistinguishable from real people.

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But they were never born – they’re just faces created by the AI ​​tool of “this person does not exist. com“.

Each click creates a unique and photorealistic image from billions and billions of possible combinations.

It ends up with a unique face every time – mostly almost indistinguishable from a real human, barring a few minor glitches.

You wouldn’t bat an eyelid if you saw her walking down the street or her face popped up on your social media feed.

Technology is also evolving rapidly, and experts sometimes tell The Sun Online that it’s already indistinguishable from real photos.

With the advent of these AI-generated images, increasingly sophisticated deepfake videos and audios, rapidly evolving chatbots, and computer-developed data, what’s next?

“We’re in an arms race — we’re in an arms race where both sides are deploying advanced AI,” said technology expert Dr. Mike Seymour told The Sun Online.

There are fears that this technology could be used to spread dangerous misinformation and potentially by scammers who can use AI to create entirely new identities.

dr Seymour recently demonstrated the power of this technology – he consulted with a VFK team from Adapt Entertainment to convert every actor in the movie “The Champion” from German to English by using AI to render their faces.

“It’s already indistinguishable. It just looks like the film was shot in English,” he told The Sun Online.

He cautioned the public to be better informed to ensure they are skeptical of what they encounter online given the rise of AI.

But easy access to this AI technology is accelerating adoption — and they’re becoming more common.

“The problem with anything in this area is that it’s becoming easier and easier to produce plausible counterfeits, so that’s lowering the bar for those who can attempt such actions,” said Dr. Seymour.

And a study has shown that people find that AI-generated faces are already indistinguishable from humans and are more “trustworthy” than the real deal.

The experiments, compiled by the University of California, found that AI faces were 7.7 percent more trustworthy.

“This may be because synthesized faces look more like average faces, which are themselves considered more trustworthy,” the study states.

“Regardless of the underlying reason, synthetically generated faces have appeared on the other side of the uncanny valley.”

Cassidy Bereskin, a PhD student at the Oxford Internet Institute, told The Sun Online that we now live in a world where “seeing is no longer believing”.

“Deepfake and generative AI models are becoming more sophisticated and accessible to the masses,” she said.

“They are hyper-realistic and no longer only available to programmers.

“These twin developments threaten the supply, volume, prevalence and credibility of online misinformation.”

She continued, “Deepfakes have already done significant reputational and psychological damage to pornography.

“They have also been armed to subvert democracy, national security and our economy, such as in financial fraud.

“Their increasing volume and credibility threaten to exacerbate the worst risks in our digital world.”

Both Dr. Both Seymour and Ms. Bereskin urged the public to become better informed in order to navigate the increasingly difficult information world online.

“It’s important for users to seek information from quality sources and remember that seeing is no longer believing,” said Ms. Bereskin.

“This technology is compelling so obviously bad actors will try to use it, but the best defense we have is an informed public, after all we’ve been able to do brilliant visual fakes of stills with Photoshop for years, but because people know it , they have developed an inherently healthy skepticism when images appear improbable or strange,” said Dr. Seymour.

He said the most important awareness to develop is the ability to spot fake videos – as still images and written stories are already common.

dr Seymour continued: “We need to update our current laws to catch up, but we already have defamation and copyright laws.

“It is already illegal to impersonate or use someone’s likeness without permission.

“Current laws are a good start, but technology is moving so fast that more work needs to be done to catch up.”

Jyothsna Gurumurthy, a PhD student at Oxford University, told The Sun Online that there needs to be more focus on regulating algorithmic generator AIs.

“There could be new forms of synthetic media alongside deepfakes, which bring their own problems, but the use of artificially generated data will continue to fuel new information battles as they become more sophisticated and difficult to distinguish from reality,” she said.

dr Seymour added: “We need to update our current laws to catch up, but we already have defamation and copyright laws. It is already illegal to impersonate or use someone’s likeness without permission.

“Current laws are a good start, but technology is moving so fast that more work needs to be done to catch up.”

He added that the AI ​​battle could actually go the other way – with real photos being dismissed as “fake” instead.

“We have to be wary of people saying the opposite,” he said.

“There have already been South American politicians who have claimed that uncovered videos featuring several prostitutes are ‘deep fakes’ – although most experts agree that the videos are genuine.

“But as the saying goes: ‘A lie can go around the world twice before the truth gets out of bed’.”

He warned that AI constructions of legal documents and banking documents could be a worrying development in the online space as well.

“Documents that are completely plausible and have enough genuine information woven together to make you believe they are 100% genuine and authentic,” he warned.

The world has already spread some fake news – one such AI-generated deepfake video Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on his troops to lay down their arms last March.

Such a malformation could have been devastating and sowing chaos if it ever took root.

But thankfully, the amateur attempt to impersonate Zelensky was laughed at for his shabby looks.