Trust No One: Inside the World of Deepfakes

by Michael Grothaus

Overview

Deepfake technology can create video evidence of just about anything:

Hollywood superstar Margot Robbie in an orgy.
Chinese president Xi Jinping declaring nuclear war.
Basketball legend Michael Jordan winning the World Cup.

The only limit is the imagination.

In a time where fake news and disinformation is becoming harder and harder to identify, it is more essential than ever to understand the dark origins of deepfakes.

Journalist Michael Grothaus goes down the rabbit hole as he interviews the often morally dubious, yet incredibly skilled creators of this content. It's a journey that opens a window into the communities transforming reality.

Challenging, enlightening and terrifying, Trust No One asks the question other people are too scared to: what happens when you can no longer believe your own eyes?

'An alarming look at deepfakes' Sunday Times

'Michael Grothaus takes a hard look at the growth of deep fakes, examining cases that demonstrate the threats presented by morally dubious creators. From the personal to political, the impact of deep fakes is considered carefully by Grothaus, both on the victims and on society as a whole, creating an essential picture of a growing trend in disinformation' Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781529347999
Publisher:	Hodder
Publication date:	11/11/2021
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Michael Grothaus is a novelist and journalist. Having got his start over 20 years ago writing for Screen, his work has since appeared in Fast Company, VICE, the Guardian, Litro Magazine, The Irish Times, Quartz, and others. His debut novel Epiphany Jones, a story about the alienating aspects of the internet and sex trafficking among the Hollywood elite, was longlisted for the John Creasy New Blood Dagger Award in 2017. Trust No One is his first non-fiction book.

Table of Contents

Prologue Where's All the Chaos? ix

Chapter 1 The Forger and the Inspector 1

Chapter 2 Here Come the Shallowfakes 27

Chapter 3 Never Is a Lot Shorter than It Used To Be 57

Chapter 4 Deepfakers for Hire 105

Chapter 5 Deepfaking for Likes and Profit 151

Chapter 6 The End of History 182

Chapter 7 The End of Trust 208

Chapter 8 The End of Death 235

Notes 261

Acknowledgements 277

Editorial Reviews

A clear, readable rundown of how deepfakes are changing our world—The Sunday Times

The page-turner of a book stresses that deepfakes are a ticking timebomb and that we, the public, need to educate ourselves before we herald in a zero-trust society where seeing is no longer believing... If you're looking for a greater understanding of the wild world of deepfakes, how they are created, their benefits and harms as well as their stomach-churning implications; Trust No One is a great place to start.—Reaction

Michael Grothaus takes a hard look at the growth of deep fakes, examining cases that demonstrate the threats presented by morally dubious creators. From the personal to political, the impact of deep fakes is considered carefully by Grothaus, both on the victims and on society as a whole, creating an essential picture of a growing trend in disinformation.—Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellincat

Thought-provoking . . . he interviews some shady characters and raises interesting questions—Mail On Sunday

An alarming look at deepfakes.—The Sunday Times

Our relationship with visual representations of ourselves always runs along this axis of narcissism and dread: at once promising a defeat of death, but by arousing that desire only to disappoint it, crushingly reinforcing its inevitability. Our fascination with deepfakes strikes me as the latest iteration of this emotional rollercoaster, and it's one Grothaus captures very well.—Peter Pomerantsev, The Guardian

From the Publisher