Specifically, what's Synthetic Media?

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I started hearing about Synthetic Media one year ago, right at the beginning of the Advertising Futures module at uni. By that time, I considered it as one of those futuristic and dystopian concepts that you don't believe might eventually find adoptions in real life; it reminded me of Black Mirror.

Today, not everyone is familiar with it, but the technology keeps on growing. 
Synthetic Media, most colloquially known as Deepfake Technology, is still a brand-new concept, and therefore, there is still no shared conceptual framework and taxonomy to refer to. Due to such limitations, the project uses Nina Schick's definition as the main reference. The author describes Synthetic Media as "media (including images, audio and video) that is either manipulated or wholly generated by AI" (Schick, 2020, p. 10).

Synthetic Media differs from the so-called cheapfakes or shallowfakes which Nina Schick defines as "media that has been crudely manipulated, edited, mislabeled, or improperly contextualized to spread disinformation" (Schick, 2020, n.p.). Unlike Synthetic Media, cheapfakes or shallowfakes “utilize simple video editing software to alter existing media, without relying on Machine Learning and deep-learning systems” (Deepfakenow, 2020, n.p.).

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An overview of the ugly side of Synthetic Media

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As AI improves, the synthetic increasingly becomes undistinguishable from the non-synthetic, and thus, we all become potential targets when this is used harmfully. Schick warns: "it is no exaggeration to say that if you have ever been recorded at any time in any form of audiovisual documentation, be that a photograph, a video or an audio recording, then you could theoretically be the victim of a deepfake fraud. These deepfakes will be used in a number of ways to defraud private citizens, from infiltrating our online banking to crooks posing as family members or a friend in distress. (...) with deepfakes, even the most discerning and savvy among us could be duped" (Schick, 2020, pp. 160-161).

Furthermore, in their paper, Danielle Citron and Bobby Chesney discuss about the harmful uses of Synthetic Media in pornography, politics, and journalism. In relation to pornography, they argue: “an individual’s face, voice, and body can be swapped into real pornography. (...) In addition to inflicting direct psychological harm on victims, deep-fake technology can be used to harm victims along other dimensions due to their utility for reputational sabotage. (...) It could mean the loss of romantic opportunity, the support of friends, the denial of a promotion, the cancellation of a business opportunity, and beyond“ (Chesney, et al. 2019, pp. 1772-1773).

In politics, fake visual and audio content might endanger policy debates, elections, and trust in institutions. This leads us to the liar’s dividend, an expression that refers to situations when “a person accused of having said or done something might create doubt about the accusation by using altered video or audio evidence that appears to contradict the claim. (...) In situations of resource-inequality, we may see deep fakes used to escape accountability for the truth” (Citron, et al., 2019, p. 1785). Deepfakes will be just the ultimate escamotage for liars.
Regarding journalism, the two authors advise: “As the capacity to produce deep fakes spreads, journalists increasingly will encounter a dilemma: when someone provides video or audio evidence of a newsworthy event, can its authenticity be trusted? That is not a novel question, but it will be harder to answer as deep fakes proliferate. News organizations may be chilled from rapidly reporting real, disturbing events for fear that the evidence of them will turn out to be fake“ (Citron, et al., 2019,  p. 1784).

Unfortunately, at this early stage, legislation specific to deepfakes does not exist as such in the UK, as stated by Kelsey Farish, lawyer and deepfake expert (Farish, 2020, n.p). However, Farish also adds that "other more established laws and legal doctrines may be applicable when attempting to resolve disputes concerning an unwanted deepfake or manipulated video" (Farish, 2020, n.p).

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How to establish when this technology is used ethically then?

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Frameworks for ethical uses of Synthetic Media

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Our point of reference is the framework defined by Synthesia, an AI video generator platform.

Such framework relies on three main elements:

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"Consent: no matter the intention of the synthetic media content, no one should be synthetisized without giving consent. It should be necessary to implement a digital consent system to streamline the process.

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Control: actors should be in control of their likeness and should have access to a record of all synthetic media content they appear in.

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Collaboration: a general willingness to engage in public discourse and education around synthetic media"

 

(Synthesia, 2021, n.p.).

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Creativity in the age of Synthetic Media

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On the other side of the coin, Synthetic Media takes creativity to the next level. In Advertising, it can allow brands to reach customers with highly targeted and personalised messaging, as Chitrakorn writes (Chitrakorn, 2021, n.p.).

Lejeune is of the idea that “influencers might start licensing their faces and voices to brands (...) A computer can take their faces and voices and reproduce them in 16 different languages or poses, and select the most persuasive one" (Chitrakorn, 2021, n.p.).

Iskender Dirik, Managing Director at Samsung NEXT Europe, strongly believes that Synthetic Media will allow for greater experimentations in creative industries (Dirik, 2020, n.p.). Virtual assistants, digital supermodels, chatbots, and virtual influencers are just some of the adoptions for commercial purposes made available by this technology lately. 

Even real content creators such as celebrities, artists, influencers, and experts will be able to scale by having their digital avatars representing them at any place, at any time (Samsung NEXT Ventures, 2020, p. 24).

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Towards Synthetic Realities

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Synthetic Media can be potentially integrated with other technologies too, creating a whole new range of experiences that make the unreal even more undistinguishable from the real. In this sense, according to Walter Pasquarelli, Synthetic Media should not be considered "as a stand-alone technology, but rather as one that in combination with other technologies exponentially increases in its impact. (...) For developers of immersive technologies, the technology powering synthetic media is a ‘hot area’ because of its potential for creating replicas of real-life persons or objects and turning them into photo-realistic digital components which feel part of the natural environment. Going a step further, applying AI-generated synthetic media in VR will mean the creation of entire ‘synthetic realities’ (SR), transporting the user to far away to places that never were" (Pasquarelli, 2019, n.p).