Can You Be Your Most Authentic Self?
Recent headlines that have intrigued me concern those around artificial intelligence and deepfakes. It is well-known that technology has reached the stage whereby one can no longer guarantee that actions done and words spoken belong to yours truly. This means a readiness to tackle cybercrime and increasing the number of online security checks. How then, in this day and age, can we claim to be ourselves?
Facial recognition is the buzzword in modern homes and immigration counters when we travel abroad. This has helped alleviate the burden of security officers and safeguards the livelihoods of many. Yet, one problem remains. If it is so easy to hack into somebody’s online profiles and retrieve personal information, how can we ensure that the persona presented is the optimal one? How do people tell apart the ‘fake’ from the ‘real’?
It is of increasing concern that deepfakes are now prevalent. With the touch of a button, seasoned cybercriminals can manipulate one’s voice and lip sync a video message to make it look like the person is saying something that they’re actually not. This is deeply worrying because if anyone can do so, then the information via the message conveyed will be false! Anyone can pretend to be anyone else, in other words.
So, until people learn to live with this uncertainty (seeing may not be believing), or until there’s an online revolution to prevent damage done by deepfakes, we will have to accept this ambiguity and erosion of our identity.
