proliferated on social media earlier this week, it provided a brief preview of a digital information disaster AI researchers have warned against for years. The image was clearly fabricated, but that didn’t stop several prominent accounts like Russian state-controlled RT and Bloomberg news impersonator @BloombergFeed from running with it. Local police reportedly received frantic communications from people believing another 911-style attack was underway.
The deepfaked Pentagon fiasco resolved itself in a few hours, but it could have been much worse. Earlier this year, computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, referred to by some as the “,” said he was concerned the increasingly convincing quality of AI-generated images could lead the average person to “not be able to know what is true anyone.”
Startups and established AI firms alike are racing to develop new AI deepfake detection tools to prevent that reality from happening. Some of these efforts have been underway for years but the sudden explosion of generative AI into the mainstream consciousness by OpenAI’s