The College Student Whose Face Was Deepfaked Onto Porn
The period of time from the mid-20th century up until right now has often been called the “Information Age.” It’s defined by the massive amount of technological progress over the last century, which has brought anything and everything we could ever want right to our fingertips. News, pop culture, weather, porn—if we desire it, we can have it at the speed it takes to type in a request on our phones.
But perhaps more than any one piece of real data, humanity has been characterized over the last decade by its ability to sift through deception. What is and is not real continues to be the question that hovers above all of politics. Meanwhile, the rise of artificial intelligence suckers in an entire Twitter feed of impressionable users every five minutes, handing over their facial map to see what they might look like as a renaissance painting.
A more appropriate way to categorize this current state would be the “Disinformation Age,” where nothing is ever quite what it seems. Deepfake technology is the most pertinent calling card of this new era. That tech, which collects facial mapping data from a wealth of photos of the same person, allows one person’s face to be plastered upon someone else’s body. Despite being the subject of social experiments and absurd meme videos, deepfake technology has become an epidemic that presents real dangers, both political and personal.