On the 25th December 2020 while I was still working on my project Channel 4 aired a five minute video that was a deepfake of the Queen herself giving a fake Christmas day speech.
The video led to 200 Ofcom complaints but channel 4 said the video was meant to be a “stark warning” about the threat of deepfake news, with Ian Katz the director of programmes for Channel 4 saying it is “a powerful reminder that we can no longer trust our own eyes”. This is the effect I tried to create at the start of my documentary when saying "but what happens in a world where seeing something with your own eyes, doesn’t necessarily mean it did happen that way”
The Christmas day video assured me that my concerns and reason for creating the project are real. Although my project focusses on deepfake porn and the effects on it's victims, the deepfake of the queen proved to me that the technology is advancing in leaps and bounds and could be used in multiple scary ways whether it be political or to create revenge porn.
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