The Future Normal: What if we could trust online content? 📷 ✅
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What if...
We could trust information online?
Hi
tl;dr. The arms race against disinformation will continue to rage long past Election Day. But there is hope that we will be able to believe in the information we encounter online again. Truepic's recent partnership with Qualcomm is a potential game-changer here.
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The Future Normal: Certified Media.
It started with porn. Of course it did. In November 2017, an anonymous Reddit user launched the /r/deepfake subReddit message board, where they published a series of AI-generated videos that mapped the faces of Gal Gadot and Scarlett Johansson onto porn stars, creating fake but near-believable videos. The deepfake genie was out of the bottle.
Fast forward to late 2020 and deepfakes have become mainstream. During the pandemic, broadcaster Hulu created an ad campaign called ‘The Deepfake’, putting the faces of professional football players onto actors bodies to highlight the brand’s inability to shoot a traditional commercial. Last week, the creators of South Park launched a brilliant deepfake-based YouTube satire, Sassy Justice. If you always wondered how Mark Zuckerberg would sell dialysis treatment, then this will make your day.
Lawmakers in California and China don’t typically agree on much, but fears around the risks and impacts of deep fakes have caused them both to act. In late 2019, California passed two laws focused on deepfakes. Law AB730 makes it illegal to distribute deepfakes of politicians within 60 days of an election, while AB602 allows subjects of deepfake pornography (still the most common use of the technology) to sue its creator. Meanwhile, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued regulations requiring any content that was made with or manipulated by AI to be clearly labeled.
Fake news and distrust
Deep fakes are just one strand of a far bigger issue facing societies in the digital era. How do people know what is real? How does fake or manipulated media erode the public’s trust? Until Donald Trump, few had heard the term ‘fake news’. Now, the Edelman Trust Barometer found three quarters of global respondents worry that fake news is being used as a weapon to undermine their society.
The rise of social media and the fact that anyone, anywhere can produce and distribute media is overwhelming people’s ability to assess whether the information they encounter is trustworthy. In 2018, MIT researchers reported that misinformation spreads up to 100 times further and six times faster than truth, and political falsehoods spread three times faster than other misinformation.
The volume of ‘synthetic media’ (that produced or manipulated by AI) will only increase as new, more powerful tools spread. In June 2020, the research lab OpenAI released a beta of its GPT-3 tool, a radically more powerful AI that can generate largely coherent text. The Guardian newspaper published an op-ed generated by the tool. A student used GPT-3 to generate self-help blog posts, some of which were upvoted by human users to the top of Hacker News.
The certified media arms race
Just as the tools of content production are being transformed, so too are the tools of authentication. Truepic is a startup based in San Diego that aims to make smartphone photos and videos more trustworthy. The startup recently announced it was partnering with Qualcomm to embed metadata about when and where an image or video was taken directly into the firmware of the chip. This is a very big deal for three reasons. First, Qualcomm makes the chips that power almost all non-Apple phones. Think Samsung, Google, Xiaomi, Microsoft, LG, OnePlus, and Motorola. Second, embedding the metadata at the firmware level means it is untamperable. Third, adding this functionality at the chip level means that users don’t have to find or download another app. The companies’ demonstration showed someone simply choosing ‘Secure’ mode in the same way they choose ‘Portrait’ or ‘Panoramic’ modes.
It doesn’t take long to imagine potential use cases. NGOs and citizen journalists are already using Truepic’s standalone app to capture verified images from conflict zones. Similarly, insurance companies have a vested interest in confirming the authenticity of images. But other sectors should watch with interest: ecommerce, peer-to-peer platforms (dating, property listings), to name a few.
Given how media-rich our lives are, the benefits of being able to trust media are huge. Sherif Hanna, VP of R&D at Truepic notes that, "85% of the photos taken are on smartphones. If you want to restore trust in videos and photos, you need to figure out a way to get this into people’s hands.” Social media wasn’t a factor a generation ago when Francis Fukuyama wrote Trust: The Social Virtue and the Creation of Prosperity, but his central argument still holds. A society riddled with distrust can not be an economically –– or indeed a socially –– prosperous place.
We don't have universally authentic media, yet. Indeed, events in the next few days might make you question if this will ever be possible. But when you're thinking about Certified Media, try the questions below as a starting point. How would you fare it became the Future Normal?
Join us...
We're writing this book in public, and we'd love your input.
A reminder, for those of you who missed the launch email.
We – Henry Coutinho-Mason and Rohit Bhargava – are bringing together our 20+ years immersed in trends in order to try and make sense of this current moment. The Future Normal will give you a simple, accessible and deeply practical guide to the biggest opportunities of the next decade.
But we don't want to do this alone. We're connected to thousands of smart people working at the frontiers of literally every industry and market in the world. We know you know the instigators that will change our world for the better.
We'd love your feedback, tips and advice. Will we win the battle against disinformation? Will regulators have to step in, or can the platforms figure out how to stop fake news and hate speech? Will technology save us, or will humans (gasp!) still be required to solve this very human phenomenon? Where are the signs of hope?
Let us know by replying to this email or, even better, comment on the LinkedIn article or Instagram post so that others can benefit from your insights!
Next week, we'll be exploring the Future Normal: Carbon Counting. See you then!
Henry & Rohit
Masters of the futurist power pose 😂