The look on my neighbor's face when I faked his voice last May
I made a 30 second clip using a free voice cloning site and played it for my neighbor Bill outside his garage in Portland. He went pale and asked how I got that recording of him arguing with his landlord, but it was 100% fake from 3 YouTube videos he posted. That moment stuck with me because he didn't even question it, he just believed the audio was real. Has anyone else tested a deepfake on someone they know and watched their trust crack in real time?
That part where he went pale and just accepted it as real, that got me. It's one thing to know deepfakes exist, it's another to watch someone you see every day get completely fooled by one. I had a buddy send me a fake voicemail from his own mom's phone number using one of those apps, and the way his voice cracked when he said he was worried about her, that stuck with me for weeks. It's not even about the tech being scary, it's how fast we trust our ears over everything else. You basically watched Bill's whole reality shift in a second, and that has to rattle you too.