Two decades ago, when Hany Farid first began studying digital misinformation and manipulated media, fake content was easier to detect. Today, that landscape has shifted with a speed that he describes as “breathtaking.” In just the last year or two, he says, we’ve moved from an era where a computer takes seconds or minutes to produce a static file to "full-blown interactive deepfakes" that can hold a live conversation in real time.

In this Berkeley Talks episode, Farid, a digital forensics expert and professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, discusses the rapidly accelerating landscape of generative AI and the unique threat it poses to our collective understanding of the world.

Farid notes that tools once reserved for governments or well-funded organizations are now freely available, radically expanding the threat landscape. “We have taken a mechanism that was in the hands of state-sponsored actors and bad actors and given it to 8 billion people in the world," he says. This democratization of powerful technology makes it much easier to create convincing false images, audio and video — and much harder to trust what we see online.

And he explains that human perception is no longer a reliable defense, as his research shows people are only slightly better than chance at identifying AI-generated content.

To reduce the damage to our shared sense of reality, Farid suggests solutions should focus on the systems that profit from harmful content, including platforms and ad networks that help it spread. He also gives a warning about news consumption: “Stop getting your news from social media. That’s not what it was designed for.

Despite the rise of deepfakes and online deception, Farid says he rejects the idea that there is no truth or fact. He believes that, although it takes effort, people can still work together to understand what is happening in the world.

This lecture, which took place on March 13, was part of LNS 110: Brilliance of Berkeley, a course featuring distinguished researchers working on the world’s most pressing issues.

Watch Farid's lecture (with slides) on YouTube.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-talks).

Music by HoliznaCC0.

Screenshot from lecture.

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Hany Farid on the erosion of shared reality in the age of deepfakes