Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Technology enables us to fake photos and videos. We can make anyone appear to say and do anything. Preventing such is quite simple.

Someone makes a deep fake video of me saying and doing something I neither said nor did. How do I disprove it?

“You know me. You know I wouldn’t say and do that.”

Simple, right? Yes, it is simple. It, however, requires time and effort to come to know a person and the types of things they say and do. We all create ourselves every day. We all create background in which we can say, “You know me.”

Funny how 200 years ago someone would walk into town and say, “My name is Fred Jones.” Everyone believed that because we had no records. Today we have records (photos and videos and voice recordings). Someone can show a video and say, “This is Fred Jones. Look at what he did.” The abundance or records replaced the dearth of them. We are still left to trust.