CHAPTER 25The Impact of Synthetic Content
Synthetic media can be defined as any type of media content (text, image, video, sound) that has been fully or partially generated using AI. A report by Europol predicts that by 2026, up to 90 percent of online content could be synthetically generated.1 This staggering statistic underscores the growing influence of AI in shaping digital content landscapes.
The Rise of Deepfakes
Deepfakes are multiplying at an accelerating rate. A 2023 study by Home Security Heroes, a team of online security experts, found that there were more than 95,000 deepfakes online in 2023, up 550 percent since 2019. And the World Economic Forum reports that online deepfakes increased by 900 percent between 2022 and 2023, stressing the rising interest and impact of this technology.
Deepfake-generating techniques have reached the point where they can consistently fool commercial facial recognition services.2 Veritone launched a platform called MARVEL.ai in 2021 that allows creators, media figures, and others to make deepfake clones of their voice to license however they want. The company says that its AI platform, using archive recordings to train AI models, is able to resurrect the voices of dead people. MARVEL.ai also exists as a marketplace, allowing prospective buyers to submit requests to use a voice clone just for them.3 Hour One is another start-up that uses people's semblances to design AI-voiced characters that then are shown in marketing and educational ...
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