Saw a deepfake of Obama selling mattresses and it messed with my head

My neighbor showed me this video of Obama talking about mattress deals and for a solid 10 seconds I thought it was real. The way his mouth moved and the voice matched up was scary good. I only caught it because he said something about "spring coils" that sounded off for Obama. Makes me wonder how many fake clips I've scrolled past without noticing. Has anyone here ever spotted a deepfake in the wild and missed it at first?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_max13d ago

The part about "spring coils" sounding off is exactly the kind of thing that trips me up. I once spent way too long arguing with a friend over a fake Elon Musk video before realizing I was getting pranked.

karencampbell13d ago

You would think with all the practice I've had getting fooled by my own grandkids, I'd be better at spotting these things by now. Last week I spent a good fifteen minutes trying to figure out why a video of a penguin "talking" with a human voice seemed so realistic. Turned out it was just a simple edited clip my son sent me, and he had a good laugh at my expense. I suppose we all learn these lessons the hard way, one embarrassing moment at a time.

nelson.vera13d ago

Oh man, my thing is that these deepfakes are getting so good they might actually change how we remember real events. Like, think about it - if you see a fake clip of a politician saying something crazy and then later you hear a real clip of them saying something similar, your brain might mix the two up. I caught a fake of my local mayor endorsing a shady construction company, and even after I knew it was fake, I kept having this weird feeling like I'd seen him actually stand next to those buildings in real life. We're not just getting tricked in the moment, our memories are getting rewritten too and that's the part that really gets under my skin.