From Really? No, Really? Podcast
Deepfake hoaxes, Meta-averse and Jason punk'd
By Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden
If you've seen the Tom Cruise deepfake or any of the thousands of others online, it becomes obvious that an image or recording can be easily manipulated. Jason and Peter had to find out just how much of what we are seeing is faked, so they reached out to Dr. Hany Farid, who has been called “The father of digital forensics” for some answers.
But deepfakes are just the beginning. Companies like Meta are creating virtual worlds and estimates are that by 2026, 25% of us will be spending at least an hour a day immersed in virtual reality with Gen X consumers spending as much as 4 to 5 hours a day! Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal shares what it’s like to exercise on a virtual mountaintop, get singled out at a virtual comedy club, and she’s got some interesting predictions about the future!
Oh, and even though he knows it’s an episode about deepfakes... Jason gets deepfaked by Peter!
Hany Farid is a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information and EECS. He specializes in digital forensics.
