Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse

Should have been a blog most. Or at least a long read.

A current snapshot of our world ravaged by disinformation campaigns. Deepfakes are the threat that looms on the horizon, while our societies and politics are already shaken enough by the power maliciously deployed simple text and images can have. We're not that far from the moment when we won't be able to discern the authenticity of video content anymore, and the tools to create fake videos will be cheap and widely available.

The book is not as deeply researched as hoped and feels like a rush editing job, but it's nonetheless a good and essential wakeup-call to a topic that's rapidly evolving and can only provide a deeply-researched book once we're past it possibly? There's a look at Russia's long history of doctoring media for political reasons, and the conspiracy theories they're creating to feed civil unrest in other democracies. There's slightly too much US election and Trump content, Estonia represents in a short note as the shining example of emerging stronger after a cyber-combat with Russia, and there's even a chapter on the recent Covid infodemic.

It ends on a chapter summarizing current initiatives and resources trying to teach, detect and combat disinformation campaigns and information warfare. It made me sign up to the NewsGuard misinformation Monitor newsletter.

I agree with some of the other reviews I've read here. I appreciated the explanation of the threat of cheap and deep fakes, but it felt like the book was a little rushed. I noticed a handful of mistakes that could've used better editing as well.