Remember Christopher Nolan’s Inception? Remember the entire bit of influencing someone in their dreams using a false narrative to a point where they believe that to be the reality? Well, a team of researchers and scientists have managed to do that without dealing with someone falling asleep or hacking into their dreams.
Researchers have discovered that false memories can be implanted by showing individuals deep-faked clips of movie remakes that were never actually made. These deepfaked clips were convincing enough to trick participants into believing they were real, with some even ranking the non-existent movies as better than the actual originals.
The study, published in PLOS One, had an interesting caveat. While the deepfakes distort memory, they were no more effective than simple text descriptions. In other words, deepfakes are not the sole factor in tricking someone into accepting a false memory.
Lead study author Gillian Murphy, a misinformation researcher at University College Cork in Ireland, emphasized that we shouldn’t immediately jump to dystopian conclusions about emerging technologies. “Yes, there are genuine harms posed by deep fakes, but we should always gather evidence for those harms in the first instance before rushing to solve problems we’ve just assumed might exist,” he said.
The researchers showed deepfaked videos to 436 participants, featuring well-known actors like Brad Pitt in The Shining and Charlize Theron in Captain Marvel.
The results showed that 49 percent of participants were fooled by the deepfakes, with 41 percent of this group claiming that the Captain Marvel remake was better.
However, it is reassuring to know that a simple text description of the deepfake had the same level of convincing power as the actual video clips. This suggests that deepfakes are not uniquely powerful in distorting recollections of reality compared to other forms of misinformation.
“Our findings are not especially concerning, as they don’t suggest any uniquely powerful threat of deepfakes over and above existing forms of misinformation,” Murphy told The Daily Beast.
To protect ourselves from the impact of deep fakes, promoting technological literacy among people to help them differentiate between deep fraud and real media could be a valuable strategy. Awareness of the existence and potential influence of deepfakes can help individuals critically assess the information and make more informed judgments.
