Deepfakes shift threat from false content to doubt in truth, experts warn
via Le Matin4 min read
African experts in artificial intelligence, governance, and media, participating in a session with the Policy Center for the New South PCNS, have warned that deepfakes are increasingly eroding collective trust by making it difficult to distinguish between real and fabricated images, videos, and voices. Mohamed Benabid, a practice professor at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University UM6P, noted that the shift is not just technological but also societal and epistemological, leading to a crisis where only 40% of the global population trusts information. Imad Hashtagi, Program Officer at PCNS, highlighted that deepfakes create an environment where even genuine evidence becomes questionable, fostering a "liar's dividend" where authentic content can be dismissed as fake. Karen Oakley, an electoral process specialist, emphasized that this poses a significant challenge for democracies, as viral rumors or falsified videos can undermine electoral integrity. The number of deepfakes has increased sixteenfold in two years, with a new one generated every two minutes, extending beyond politics to sophisticated financial fraud, such as a British company reportedly losing $25 million from an AI-simulated video conference. Experts also noted that current detection tools struggle to keep pace with generative AI advancements, and compression on social media erases technical clues. The African continent is particularly vulnerable, as most deepfake detection systems are trained on Western databases and
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This summary was AI-generated from a story originally published by Le Matin.
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