Deepfake Amazon Workers Confusion on Twitter Points to a More Concerning Trend
https://www.technologyreview.comAhead of a landmark vote that could lead to the formation of the first-ever labor union at a US-based Amazon warehouse, new Twitter accounts purporting to be Amazon employees started appearing. The profiles used deepfake photos as profile pictures and were tweeting some pretty laughable, over-the-top defenses of Amazon’s working practices. They didn’t seem real, but they still led to confusion among the public. Was Amazon really behind them? Was this some terrible new anti-union social media strategy? The answer is almost certainly not—but the use of deepfakes in this context points to a more concerning trend overall.
This just proved deepfake accounts can be deployed in a coordinated way on social media or elsewhere for far more sinister purposes.
A hyper-awareness of deepfakes could also lead people to stop believing in real media, which could have equally dire consequences, such as undermining the documentation of human rights abuses.
