AI

AI has made people more suspicious of all online media

An Adobe survey says deepfakes have muddled a sense of reality on the internet.
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Whatever the actual extent of AI-generated political content may be, the rise of deepfakes has made people much more skeptical of election-related media online.

A new survey from Adobe found that nearly three-quarters of respondents have questioned the authenticity of photos and videos from reputable news sites because misinformation is perceived to be running rampant. More than four in 10 reported being misled by election-related falsehoods in the past three months, and 43% said they are less likely to trust content around the election online.

The enterprise software giant commissioned the research in support of its own Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI), a coalition of companies working to establish a credentialing system that serves as an industry standard for labeling unaltered content.

The survey comes as the US is in the home stretch of the so-called AI election, the country’s first presidential race in which generative AI might play a significant role. While sizing up the actual scope of that impact can be tricky, Adobe seems to have identified a widespread cratering of trust in online media.

Call to action: Close to half of the 2,002 respondents told Adobe that they planned to stop or cut down using a specific social media platform because of widespread misinformation—a 23% jump from the same survey response in March.

Almost 90% of those surveyed said social media platforms should enforce stricter policies around misinformation, and almost three-quarters said the government isn’t doing enough to regulate the issue. Around 94% of people are concerned it will impact the election.

Credentials needed? Adobe has a stake in the issue as well. The company co-founded the CAI in 2019 when the threat of deepfakes was still more theoretical. Since then, it has developed a content credential system that embeds information about the provenance of and alterations to a given image or video via a small icon in the corner.

Of course, the media “nutrition label,” as Adobe has pitched it, is only effective if its use becomes the norm, which is why the CAI has rallied companies like most major social media platforms, many big media outlets, and all of the largest camera makers to the cause.

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Tech Brew keeps business leaders up-to-date on the latest innovations, automation advances, policy shifts, and more, so they can make informed decisions about tech.

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