Art, War and the Deepfake

This isn’t my usual thing, but something fascinating just happened and I’m in a rare position to offer a fast reaction to it.

 

For a few brief moments today, every hobbyist day-trader in the United States was convinced that a bomb had gone off in front of the Pentagon. Over the ensuing several minutes, stock values collapsed in response to algorithmically fed news tickers on trading platforms reacting to tweets. 

A fake image of a short white building behind a security fence with an explosion in the foreground to its left, that people claimed was an image of the pentagon exploding.
A fake image of a short white building behind a security fence with an explosion in the foreground to its left, that people claimed was an image of the Pentagon exploding. The building bears little resemblance to the Pentagon.

Continue reading “Art, War and the Deepfake”