Synthetic media

Synthetic media refers to computer-generated or manipulated images, audio, video, and text that appear to represent authentic data. Key aspects:

• Created using AI like generative adversarial networks
• Seeking to emulate and potentially misrepresent real content
• Includes deepfakes which replace people's faces/voices in media
• Can fabricate events or public statements that never occurred
• Enables powerful editing tools but risks deceiving public
• Poses threats of misinformation and forged identities

Mitigation techniques:

• Digital watermarking and hashing to authenticate origin
• Media forensics analyzing statistical patterns
• Tracing synthesis artifacts like inconsistent backgrounds
• Social graph analysis to identify coordinated campaigns

Synthetic media represents major advances in AI creativity and content generation. But responsible policies, education, and tools remain imperative to limit harms and forgeries.

See also:

• Generative adversarial network
• Deepfake
• Computational propaganda
• Online misinformation