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Rahim Sarpas
CST 300 Writing Lab
30 January 2023
The Inflection Point

Deep-fake technology is a term associated with "AI images and sounds put together with

machine-learning algorithms" that "can manipulate media and replace a real person’s image,

voice, or both with similar artificial likenesses and voices." (What are deepfakes and how to spot

them. (n.d.). The development of deep-fake technology has advanced to the point where telling

the difference between edited and non-edited media has become nonexistent. Multiple issues

stem from this, but the focus here would be on the usage of deep-faked media within the media.

Who would be involved in the battle over regulating the flow of information, and who would be

for and against its usage within our modern world?

Deep-fake technology is a result of the world’s reliance on and development of artificial

intelligence and machine learning. This technology uses multiple images, sounds, schematics,

patterns, and other forms of media to train an AI system to create distorted versions of the media

it studies. The application of this technology is made in good faith or bad faith, as the most

harmful use case could be to spread false information. This can be used to fabricate false

narratives in the news media against certain individuals, politicians, academics, businesses, and

more. The worst part of this is the lack of ability to differentiate whether or not the news-related

media presented is factual or fabricated.

Throughout the twentieth century, the rise of artificial intelligence was culturally

accepted through various forms of media. The idea captivated a young British polymath named

Alan Turing, who observed that humans collect vast amounts of information, make connections,

and filter all of it based on certain criteria (Rockwell, 2020). The young man then went and

applied the same concept to machines and structured the fundamental framework for artificial
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intelligence. The research was then applied to various tasks, and with Deep Faking in mind, the

use of artificial intelligence in the creation of false media has reached an inflection point where

the objective in a situation has become subjective. This applies to all forms of media, such as

video, audio, images, legal work, text, art, and much more.

The parties caught in the issue that deep-fake technology brings upon society are not the

common public or the people creating the false media in the first place. The issue at hand is

whether we should let the altered media be used in the news or not. The stakeholders in this

situation would be the news media and the government.

The values that the news media holds are very subjective and, at times, at odds with one

another. The news media upholds any sort of idea or narrative that brings attention to them (the

organization or corporation) in a positive manner. The news media works together most of the

time to push a narrative and a side to a story that would be most beneficial for everyone involved

financially in the long run. The significance of these values is that they show that they uphold

profits and professionalism in a modern journalistic sense. This means that they will forsake

common values that they could also hold in common with the public in the pursuit of financial

gain, the preservation of their reputation, the stability of their relationships with other

institutions, and anything else that will benefit them.

The news media’s position on the issue of deep faking will be two-sided. The news media

will try to meet the demands made by both sides because it is in their nature to continue to exist.

The news media needs to have a clean and good relationship with the public, and to keep that,

they will end up appealing to the public with the intent to garner more support for their position,

while they may or may not agree with the public’s stance on the issue. The news media will try

their best to avoid the burden of responsibility and the need for verification of these new forms
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of falsified news-related media items and keep doing what they currently are doing. The news

media, in turn, will use the lack of responsibility to comment on whoever ends up with it and the

complications of their ability to handle the falsified information.

The claims that the news media will attempt to use will be claims of value, policy, and

cause. The news media will try to use "claims of value" more than any other sort of claim due to

their significance in appealing to the public’s morality to make their argument seem more solid

than their opposition’s. The second type would be claims of policy to create solutions, shirk

responsibility, or attempt to prevent a solution if it aligns with their values. The last form of a

claim that they would use would be claims of cause to elaborate on a sequence of events. This is

also to make correlations and connections between other events to prove a point about their

position in the argument.

The government is a body of branches and multiple departments that serve to perform the

function of ensuring some sort of stability within the country. The government needs to ensure

that the people within the country are satisfied enough not to cause any sort of disruption to their

authority. This has been seen in the past through multiple wars and, in the American case, the

American Revolutionary War. The significance of their authority is that the government wants to

hold the power over what the nation will or will not do, and the decision to do this will be

delegated to the three branches of government. If all of the major branches can agree, they will

be able to achieve their goal of bringing a policy, an amendment, an appeal, and the like into

action. This can also be interpreted as achieving any sort of political goal.

The government’s position on the whole issue of deep-fake technology is that they don’t

want any sort of burden of dealing with and sorting through modified news-related media to

determine whether or not it is legitimate. The only instance of them wanting to do something like
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this is when they decide to use this situation as a political tool to assert more control over the

populace by verifying and falsifying news-related media that goes with or against their interests.

They do not care as to who’s making it unless it is targeted toward them. If they are in a position

to be harmed by this new technology, they’ll use everything in their power to remove the thorn in

their side. The government wants to push the current controlling party’s agenda. To do that, they

need a peaceful and stable society.

The claims that the government will use will be claims of policy, definition, cause, and

value. The importance of having policy claims on their priority list is to ensure that they have

built walls around an issue that they can easily use to advance their argument on the issue. The

claims of definition will be used to complement the claims of policy to cover any sort of topic

they may have overlooked. Utilizing claims of cause is expected to be significant to the

government due to their longevity and the need to use any sort of existing and established

framework of law to push their argument. Finally, the claim of value will be used in the same

manner as how the news media uses it to appeal to the common people in the event they lack

support for their position in the argument.

Based on the historical and technical context of the situation at hand, the deployment of

deep-fake technology throughout the world is inevitable. The threat of falsified and malicious

news-related media created within the country and internationally poses a big problem to

everyone interested in learning about objective information on a situation instead of subjective

and potentially falsified information. Why should deep-fake, altered media be allowed to flow

through the news?

Since there is a financial incentive the news media may gain from causing chaos and

mayhem in the world as people tune into popular news stations and/or channels to consume more
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of their content, the news media will use the Care Ethics framework to argue for the use of

deep-fake media in the news. The Care Ethics Framework is used to make an emotional appeal

to people to get them on their side of the argument. The framework was more or less refined into

what it was by Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddins back in the 1980s. The major principle of the

framework is to appeal to practice, value, disposition, and/or virtue (Care Ethics | Internet

Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.d.). The care ethics framework has been argued to be flawed due

to some instances of sample size and a lack of diverse perspectives. This, in turn, can create a

biased point of view that one group could consider as caring but another as not caring. The

current application of care ethics is mostly used to uncover and show the flaws in practices and

unnoticed consequences in different industries in order to prevent legal incidents from occurring.

This can include resolving the issues and putting more effort towards problem prevention within

a company, for example.

The news media essentially will be the only source of proper information, as the news

and information won’t be mishandled at a minimum by political actors in the government. The

amount of care that the news will put into clarifying and preventing misinformation from those

with political incentives will be more frequent and better in quality than any other institution.

Institutions like the government have a political incentive to prevent information that goes

against what they’re trying to achieve through the media. Even if deep-fake technology does

exist, it’ll eventually flow into the public domain, and it’s the responsibility of the news media to

fix and address the issue. The prevention and prohibition of information can’t be feasible even

with deep-fake technology, so the news media will have to be there to bring awareness to the

situation created by the new emerging technology.

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The news media believes that they are in the right because they are hands-on with the

news and have more experience with information flow. The day-to-day experience will shape

their efforts at interpreting what is real and what is fake more accurately than a government body.

The news media also knows that they are maliciously using the emergence of this technology to

their advantage and will prioritize its usage in the news cycle to gain more financially. They

believe they are correct because they know they can't do anything about it and have the ability to

avoid doing so. It’s the culmination of their position, values, incentives, and lack of

responsibility that makes them behave this way. The news media, at the very least, has very little

to lose due to stories being taken as true all the time with no fact-checking on their part but has a

lot to gain since they can use the flow of information to benefit themselves financially. The

burden of proof will ultimately fall on the consumer to determine whether or not the media is

falsified.

The government will employ Kant’s ethical framework to argue that they need to stop

and regulate the flow of information and filter out any of the deep-faked media so that they can

sustain a form of order and control over the population. This is to ensure that there remains

stability and peace within the country so that they can continue to collect taxes and do what they

usually do. In addition, this also serves as a shield for the government if something goes wrong

with the news, such as a potential falsified scandal involving a prominent government figure.

The necessity also rises for the government if actors from foreign nations decide to weaponize

the technology to harm the reputation of the government and cause civil unrest within the

country. All of these points will be used by the government to argue for its position on regulating

and preventing the use of deep-fake technology in the news.

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Kant’s Ethics is an ethical framework that justifies actions based on a rational

interpretation of a potential result or consequence. The framework bases itself on duty, as quoted:

"Put simply, to be moral we ought to conform our free will to the moral law; that is our duty."

(Messerly, 2020). With reason, one can be moral, but without it, the consequences of immorality

led by a lack of reason can be deduced. Kant's ethics is criticized for its ability to conflict with

other duties and other forms of behavior that do not fall into its duty-based morality. The lack of

incentive, the lack of responsibility for the consequences of our actions, and similar problems are

all issues that Kant's Ethics does not address. The framework is currently used in legal and other

industries where things are clear and there is no room for policy interpretation.

The government should be responsible for handling all information that may be under the

influence of falsification or deep-fake risk. This is because the government is in charge of

national security, and information that can be used maliciously may serve as a national security

risk if an organized effort of mass falsification of information occurs. The mobilization of

deep-fake technology is something that will be difficult to prevent and prohibit; however, the

harm caused by the technology will be great, and the government must prevent harm done to the

general public. The government, regardless of whether anyone has the desire to create harmless

media with deep-fake technology, has the right to stop its usage in the event it is deemed a

hazard to the country.

The government believes that it's in the right due to its authority over the nation and

potentially the news media due to how the power system is structured within most nations

around the world. Their duty to control what happens within a country is further enforced with

their established support from the public, along with force from the military if needed. The

government has to protect itself and the public if the technology is weaponized against them or
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any official. The potential weaponization of technology is another reason why the government

believes it has the authority to prevent and control the use of deep-fake media in the news.

The government has little to lose because people already do not trust the government over

specific events in the past such as wars, inflation, recessions, civil unrest, and the like. Since the

government’s reputation is at a level similar to the news media and they have a lot to gain

politically, they can push the desired changes they want for the nation. The reason why they

don’t have any form of repercussion is due to the nature of the public and how little they care

about most things that circulate in the news. Assume that the government prohibits the use of

deep-fake media in the news. In that case, it’ll most likely gain more support from the public

than any other form of negative attention because a large portion of the public just assumes the

government is doing the right thing for their interests. The portion that distrusts them won’t be

able to do anything about them due to their lack of vocality. If the public does not support

technology censorship, the government will be in a difficult position.

I do not believe that anyone should be the sole arbiter of what is and is not falsified.

Deep-fake technology is something we created, and it won't be too much of a problem because

technology can adapt to situations where information verification is difficult. The flow of

information has always been dirty and, at times, used in cruel ways for the gain of other actors.

The idea of regulating or preventing the problem is only a band-aid for the situation and will

cause more harm to whoever is trying to regulate or prevent it. The rise of automation and

technology is an essential evil that we cannot prevent unless we decide to harm ourselves and

prevent creating technology that can benefit us more than what we currently have.

Initially, my position was aligned with the government because they could choose what

they wanted to present to the public. This solves the problem by entrusting them with the task of
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verifying news that may have been falsified using deep-fake technology. Recently, I thought

hard, and I think the public has a lot to lose instead of gain by having the government involve

itself in the process. This level of government benefit is likely to result in a distorted world in

which the Ministry of Truth decides what is right and wrong, essentially giving political actors

more power than they already have. The only solution I can think of is to allow technology into

the news media and allow people to decide for themselves how to detect what is going on and

what forms of news have been falsified or not. The advancement in AI will also be followed by

the advancement of AI detection technology. Therefore, the need to regulate this new field of

false information will fade away as time goes on.

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References

Care Ethics | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2023, from

https://iep.utm.edu/care-ethics/

Messerly, J. (2020, January 22). Summary of Kant’s Ethics (short version). Reason and Meaning.

Retrieved February 7, 2023, from

https://reasonandmeaning.com/2015/03/29/finally-kants-ethics-in-two-pages/

Kanchwala, H. (2022, January 19). Deepfake Technology: What Are Deepfakes? How Do They

Make Deepfakes? Science ABC. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from

https://www.scienceabc.com/innovation/what-is-deepfake-technology.html

Rockwell, A. (2020, April 23). The History of Artificial Intelligence. Science in the News.

Retrieved January 31, 2023, from

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/history-artificial-intelligence/

Villasenor, J. (2022, March 9). Artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and the uncertain future of

truth. Brookings. Retrieved January 22, 2023, from

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2019/02/14/artificial-intelligence-deepfakes-an

d-the-uncertain-future-of-truth/

What are deepfakes and how to spot them. (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2023, from

https://us.norton.com/blog/emerging-threats/what-are-deepfakes