Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse

by Nina Schick

Overview

Uncover everything you need to know about "deepfakes" and what could become the biggest information and communications meltdown in world history.

In a world of deepfakes, it will soon be impossible to tell what is real and what isn't. As advances in artificial intelligence, video creation, and online trolling continue, deepfakes pose not only a real threat to democracy — they threaten to take voter manipulation to unprecedented new heights. This crisis of misinformation which we now face has since been dubbed the "Infocalypse."

In DEEPFAKES, investigative journalist Nina Schick uses her expertise from working in the field to reveal shocking examples of deepfakery and explain the dangerous political consequences of the Infocalypse, both in terms of national security and what it means for public trust in politics. This all-too-timely book also unveils what this all means for us as individuals, how deepfakes will be used to intimidate and to silence, for revenge and fraud, and just how truly unprepared governments and tech companies are for what's coming.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538754306
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	08/25/2020
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	456,029
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Nina Schick regularly contributes to international broadcasters including CNN, Bloomberg, Sky, and the BBC. Her work has been published by the Times, the Telegraph, and the New Statesman, amongst others. She is a political commentator, advisor, and public speaker, specializing in how technology is reshaping politics in the 21st century. She holds degrees from Cambridge University and University College London. She divides her time between London, Berlin and Kathmandu.

Table of Contents

Introduction: "fucked-up dystopia" 6

1 R/Deepfakes 24

2 Russia: the master 52

3 The West: the internal threat 86

4 The Rest: global information disorder 118

5 Deepfakes in the Wild 138

6 Covid-19: a global virus 166

7 Allies, Unite! 188

Resources 208

Endnotes 211

Interviewees 223

Acknowledgements 224

Editorial Reviews

2020-07-08
If you think election interference and internet fakery are bad now, give it a couple of years.

Artificial intelligence, writes journalist and activist Schick, is growing in sophistication to the point that it is attaining the ability to generate images depicting things that never happened. In the pornography industry, this is already manifest in “nonconsensual porn” or “faceswapping,” in which the faces of celebrities are grafted onto the bodies of porn actors. Another hacker tactic is to graft voice-overs onto images of, say, Barack Obama uttering statements that he never made in order to sway opinion. “When used maliciously as disinformation, or when used as misinformation, a piece of synthetic media is called a ‘deepfake,’ ” writes the author; when deepfakes pile up, the result is “Infocalypse.” In this brief survey, Schick examines current uses of false media, much of which comes from labs in Russia in order to seed Western sources with misinformation—the rape of a German woman by refugees, for instance, an event that never occurred. This sowing of misinformation is rendered especially easy in polarized electorates in which citizens are prepared to believe the worst of their opponents. It was rampant in 2016—and, as Schick writes, “The fact that this matter has become a partisan political issue in the United States, with one side paranoid about Russia and the other denying that Russia is a threat at all, shows that the Kremlin’s strategy is working beautifully”—and it’s likely to get far worse in 2020, with not just Russia, but also Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China attempting to influence the outcome of the presidential election. The flimflammery is not just political, writes the author, who notes that Interpol has intercepted campaigns to promote some 34,000 “fake coronavirus products.”

Those concerned with the criminal side of technology will learn from Schick’s well-mounted argument.

Kirkus Reviews

"Those concerned with the criminal side of technology will learn from Schick's well-mounted argument."—Kirkus

"Schick's DEEPFAKES is a short, sharp book that hits you like a punch in the stomach."—Nick Cohen, The Observer

"With this powerful book, Nina Schick has done us all a great public service. It's a brilliant guide to the challenges facing our information ecosystem. It's your civic duty to read it."—Jamie Susskind, award-winning author of Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech

"A searing insight into a world so many of us find difficult to understand. I was gripped from the first page and read the book in one sitting. The lessons I learned from it will stay with me for a long time."—Iain Dale, broadcaster, Leading Britain's Conversation

"Gripping, alarming and morally vital. Reading this book is like being ushered into a terrifying new world where nothing can be trusted. Thankfully Nina Schick guides us through it in a reassuringly old-fashioned way: with diligence, breezy storytelling, expert insight and a tried-and-tested commitment to accuracy."—Ian Dunt, author of Brexit: What the Hell Happens Next?

"DEEPFAKES is an uncomfortable but gripping read, probing the way in which the internet has been flooded with disinformation and dark arts propaganda dubbed by Schick as 'the Infocalypse'-and how that has undermined democracies in the world. The book sketches out an alarming future where convincing fakes will make it even harder for citizens to disentangle truth from lies, and I would advise policy-makers to read it."—Jim Pickard, chief political correspondent, The Financial Times

From the Publisher