Remember the old adage, “what you see is what you get”? Well, that phrase is officially from a bygone era. Now what you see may be what you get, but what you’re getting may not be real. With AI tools becoming less expensive and more accessible, deepfakes are increasingly finding their way into our media feeds.
Trump, Politics and AI Deepfakes
Consider the recent Donald Trump deepfake arrest video. According to a March 24th Atlantic article, it has been viewed over 5 million times. How many of those 5 million people thought it was real? How many of those people even know to be aware of AI generated images, videos and news?
As educators, we have an incredible opportunity to help our students be better critical thinkers. In addition to last week’s SmallBites episode on media bias, we can help our students–and staff–to be aware of high quality deepfakes. For those of us who like the information in long form, here is Todd C. Helmus’ Rand Corporation article, “Artificial Intelligence, Deepfakes, and Disinformation, A Primer”. And for those who want to get right to the solution, MIT Media Lab’s “Detect DeepFakes: How to counteract misinformation created by AI” is for you. And for those looking for a great media literacy warm-up or bell ringer, here’s a practice site from the above MIT article that you can use to help your students learn to recognize deepfakes.
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