Social media has become a source of news for many people, specifically younger generations. The rise of AI and deep fakes within social media has sparked problems that affect society now and in the future. In my video, I wanted to shed light on the fact that we don’t take the time to learn about issues we see on social media. The audience that I hope to watch this are college students and younger generations, because we as a generation have become numb to getting news scrolling on social media and not getting all the information. We just look at the headlines and then go on social media to state our opinion without having the knowledge or information, which causes the spread of misinformation.
Deep fakes are an issue that I highlight because over the years we have seen a lot of deep fakes involving celebrities and politics, this an issue especially because as a society if we see something out of the ordinary we have to share it with friends instead of questioning if what we are seeing on social media is real. One example that is constantly talked about when it comes to deep fakes is all the photos that came about of Taylor Swift depicted disgustingly. We have become numb to the idea of deep fakes and AI, but they can be used dangerously, for example in politics. Deep fakes make politics messy and confusing especially for the younger generations because social media has many different opinions and sides.
Big media companies are also a contributing factor to why we keep getting fed misinformation. In the article Big Tech Backslide: How Social Media Roadblocks Endanger Democracy it states, “We found that in 2023, the largest social-media companies deprioritized content moderation and other user trust and safety protections, including rolling back platform policies that had reduced the presence of hate, harassment and lies on their networks. These companies have also laid off critical staff and teams tasked with maintaining platform integrity”. It is important to remember that these companies do not have control over what people post on their platforms, but they should take some responsibility for how they use their power. They could try to make a change to this issue with the rise of AI and deep fakes, but they choose to lay off people who were trying to take steps in the right direction.
Throughout the semester we have talked about how to break down misinformation in articles by conducting a SMELL test, with rapid change in AI, I wanted to show that we need to take similar steps to the SMELL test but with images and videos found online/social media. AI and deep fakes are starting to become hard to tell if they are real or fake and before it gets worse I want to open society’s eyes. We need to start doing our research and stop relying on scrolling social media and just agreeing with whatever the headlines say without getting educated.
Work Cited
Marielle Caldwell 