In the current digital age, the manipulation of information emerges as a crucial challenge for people, organizations and states, finding its most worrying and complex expression in “DeepFake”. These digital representations, apparently authentic but artificially generated, have a high degree of credibility, threatening, among other scenarios, the integrity of electoral processes and democratic stability.
“DeepFakes” are products of artificial intelligence algorithms designed to replicate the visual and auditory identity of real individuals. Although they were initially conceived for entertainment purposes, their capacity for political manipulation has been notorious. Some techniques designed by imagers, such as OpenAI’s Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Dall-E 3, use complex mathematical processes to learn and reproduce realistic visual structures.
Paradigmatic examples, such as the spread of a fake video of President Barack Obama or the image of Pope Francis wearing a Balenciaga jacket, have shown the potential of “DeepFake” to sow confusion and misinformation on a large scale. The speed with which this content spreads online, together with its astonishing level of realism, highlights the urgency of addressing this problem in a preventive and structural way.
In the political sphere, “DeepFake” have been used to defame and manipulate public opinion. During electoral processes, the spread of falsified videos of presidential candidates, such as the audio of President Joe Biden or the photograph of Donald Trump with African Americans, allows the masses to be manipulated and influence decision-making.
Imagine a seemingly real scene; an important politician, recognizable by millions, issuing an incendiary speech that arouses passions and divides society. Now, imagine that speech never really happened; It is a digital fabrication designed to destabilize, deceive and manipulate the masses. This is not science fiction, this is the terrifying reality of “DeepFake”.
To address this threat, a multidisciplinary and coordinated approach is necessary. Citizens must be educated to distinguish the authenticity of online information, while governments and technology platforms must implement effective DeepFake detection and prevention measures. Although technological solutions have been proposed, such as the implementation of watermarks, significant challenges remain in identifying and mitigating this form of digital manipulation.