A worrying future for video news

The tweet embedded below contains video of a number of people who am have been animated from a single photograph. While this is fascinating technology and will no doubt be a boon to entertainment, historical documentaries, etc it also raises some exceptionally serious concerns regarding news reporting.

At the moment, this technology is in its infancy and the flaws in it are obvious but if we’ve learned anything from the fact that computer graphics have advanced from two bars and a square in Pong in the late Seventies to photorealistic graphics generated in real time now, it’s that technology moves at a shockingly rapid pace.

Based on this technology, I fully believe that you will not be able to tell if a video is real or fake within 5 years. That includes videos accompanying news (and especially accompanying fake news).

So please, do one thing today: make it a priority to always check the facts of everything presented to you. You can’t believe what you read online just because you read it.