Rainie, the director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center, talked with a Huffington Post reporter about rising levels of doubt about identifying AI-generated images.
As generative AI becomes more skilled at creating digital fakes, so will the number of people who fall for an artificially generated photo.
That’s leading more people to question whether they’ll be able to spot the fake, and to ask how to share the truth with a friend who believes in a false photo. The Huffington Post recently offered insights into how to be the one to break the news to that person who believes that seemingly real photo they saw of Taylor Swift endorsing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Lee Rainie, director of Elon’s Imagining the Digital Future Center, talked with Huffington Post reporter Brittany Wong, noting the center’s survey this spring that found that 45 percent of U.S. adults doubt whether they can detect a fake photo.
“It was very striking that this uncertainty was across the board among demographic groups,” Rainie told Wong. “Young people and their elders, well-educated and less well-educated, men and women, Republicans and Democrats, all expressed some level of this self-doubt. I take that to mean that Americans themselves worry they can be victimized.”
Rainie said individuals can discreetly share the truth with a friend who has shared a fake image on social media. “You know that Ad Council public service message a few decades ago against drunk driving that had the tagline ‘friends don’t let friends drive drunk’? In the age of deepfakes that can be shared widely on social media, the equivalent ad nowadays could be ‘friends don’t let friends look like idiots,’” he said.
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Rainie has spent more than two decades leading teams that report on the social, political and economic impact of technology revolutions including the internet/broadband revolution, the mobile connectivity revolution, the social media revolution, and the artificial intelligence revolution. Rainie joined Elon in 2023 as director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center after 24 years spent directing Pew Research Center’s efforts to study the internet and technology.