As he watched I could see his old soap suds circling the drain:
It sure looked like his son. It sure sounded like his son. What the heck was going on?
I explained to him that it was a deep fake video … possibly the first one he’d ever seen.
“Was it the bloody Russians?” he asked innocently.
“No idea,” I replied.
All we knew was that someone had taken footage of me from an old interview on Sky News and manipulated it into something very weird.
See, for all the hype of artificial intelligence, so far the big winners have been the scammers, who have weaponised deep fake videos and voice cloning to systematically con tens of billions of dollars a year from victims across the globe.
There are now 46 million cyber attacks launched each day, and many of them are targeted at financial institutions, according to a report in the Financial Times.
That explains why the world’s biggest bank, JP Morgan, spends $23 billion a year on technology, and employs more engineers than Google or Amazon, largely to stop cyber crooks.
And all this has left me wondering whether the dinky little credit union I bank with (which still has biros chained to the desk) will have the budget to fight the hackers and keep me safe.
(Annoyingly, after a career of bashing the Big 4 banks, it’s dawning on me that perhaps they’ll be some of the only institutions who will be able to afford to build an AI army.)
And what about my deep fake problem?
Well, when I reported it to Facebook, they called and said they were immediately dispatching a crack team of ninjas to the Kremlin to duke it out with the Ruskies.
Yeah, nah.
They didn’t even bother responding.
Yet even if they did bother to shut down the page, my guess is another 20 videos would automatically pop up. It’s like trying to get rid of thistles in my paddocks with vinegar and hot water. Yes, it’s environmentally friendly, Liz, but all the farmers around town are laughing at me!
Besides, Zuckerberg is up to his zucks right now taking deep fake videos to a very freaky new level. In an interview with tech podcaster Lex Fridman last year, Zuckerberg said his company was working on AI technology that will help you create a virtual avatar – or human-like clone of yourself – which people will be able to ‘have conversations’ with.
True dinks.
Zuckerberg is creating his own (Facebook) Frankenstein … and that story turned out okay, right?
Tread Your Own Path!
Generally I don’t speak about politics in this column, but last week my editor requested (read: demanded) that I write about the changes to tax cuts. Now I know why. Holy Hector, what a response! So, here we go again …