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That video of the mayor saying he took bribes turned out to be a deepfake and it messed with my head for a week | Deepfake Drama - Free To Speak

wyatt135•1mo ago

That video of the mayor saying he took bribes turned out to be a deepfake and it messed with my head for a week

I saw this clip of the mayor of Columbus, Ohio from a local news site last Tuesday and he was clearly admitting to taking kickbacks from a construction company. I was FURIOUS about it until I found out it was a deepfake made by some political group trying to smear him. Has anyone else seen a fake video that felt 100% real at first and how do you even trust your own eyes anymore?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_olivia1mo ago

Wait, are you telling me that those AI deepfakes are actually getting good enough to fool people? That's honestly terrifying. I saw one of those Tom Cruise deepfakes a while back and it was creepy but I could still tell something was off. But this mayor thing sounds next level if it was on a news site looking real. Makes me wonder how many other videos I've seen online were fake and I just never found out the truth about them.

valc911mo ago

It's funny you mention the Tom Cruise thing, because I actually think the bigger problem isn't the videos themselves (you know, the ones that go viral). It's the cheap, lazy ones that just mess with someone's voice or face slightly and get posted to some random Facebook page with no context. Those get shared by your aunt or uncle who doesn't realize it's fake, and before you know it, half the comment section is arguing about something that never even happened. I bet there are tons of those floating around that we just scroll past.

foster.tessa1mo ago

Have you tried checking the actual news source directly instead of just watching the clip? I got totally fooled by one of those fake celebrity endorsement videos for some sketchy weight loss product, and it was only when I went to the official website and saw nothing that I realized I'd been had. The biggest thing that helped me was learning to pause before getting outraged and just verifying who posted it first. These deepfakes are getting scary good but usually the source is the tell, like that mayor video might have been on some random blog that looked like a news site. I still get uneasy sometimes but I've trained myself to do a quick trust check now before I let myself go full angry mode.