Yes, deepfakes can make people believe in misinformation — but no more than less-hyped ways of lying
June 13, 2019But one popular suspect going into 2020 was technological: deepfakes. Originally invented for porn, deepfakes are like Photoshop for videos, letting one person’s face be realistically applied to another’s body or making it appear that someone is saying words they’ve never uttered. The fear was that a deepfake could convincingly make candidates seem to say outrageous things that would poison voters’ opinion of them. (Imagine Joe Biden “saying” that half of white people’s salaries should be garnished to fund Black Lives Matter protests. Or Donald Trump saying…well,...