No technology will solve a social problem, that’s a lesson I’ve learned after years of working on public interest tech and its intersection with art and activism.
While deepfakes and synthetic media in general, represent a new threat for democracies worldwide, it is the emergence of fascism in digital environments, a cultural phenomenon, the one that has facilitated and promoted the dissemination of fake content despite its visual accuracy.
In South America for example, fake content promoted by fascists is not really sophisticated visually, however, it has been useful for the spread of ideologies of hate that have installed conservative and authoritarian right-wing regimes in places such as Brazil, Chile, and Bolivia.
I think we need an affirmative vision rather than a palliative approach that will alarm society on the problematic consequences of synthetic media. I believe we are in front of a technology that provides us with an unique opportunity to release our imagination and address a millenary philosophical question: what is reality?
I have a vision of deepfakes that will advance communist horizons. Fictitious devices that will address central struggles of our time. I want to project those utopian visions in the form of deepfakes.
