Computer software has gotten better over the last couple of years. Though this has its advantages, it also comes with a lot of negatives. AI-generated images and voices, video game realism, photoshop, and fake news are all recipes for a future disaster.
According to Adobe, "editing software has become so sophisticated that we need to view all online images and videos with the same skepticism as scam emails."
For some context: The Book of Veles, by Jonas Bendiksen, was a project with a purpose of seeing how "real" Bendiksen could make his images. The end result was a "nice, positive echo-chamber feedback." Bendiksen did leave clues that pointed to the true nature of this project and even sent his images to the photojournalism festival Visa pour l’image, but no one noticed. For his final move, he paid for some bot accounts to attack him on social media, but his colleagues and supporters came to his defense. It wasn't until an interview on September 17 that Bendiksen revealed the true nature of this project.
Ståle Grut wrote to his readers that "we need to prepare for a new normal, where scrutinizing online images and videos is as natural as being fascinated by them." With current technology and software, "an average nerdy photographer can go into his basement, look at YouTube tutorials, and create a whole photographic documentary from scratch..." Deep fake videos of important people popping up all over the internet would have disastrous consequences.
We need to be prepared for this in the future. If technology can now fool journalists, professional photographers, and directors like Jon Favreau, it is important for us to be keeping an open eye and examining as best as we can.
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