Deepfake: A Brief History of Unreliable Images

In which John and Hank get Deepfake mustaches, which makes John think about the history of forged, shopped, cropped, and airbrushed images. Can humans learn not to trust their senses? Or are we doomed to be duped by images even when we know they're unreliable?

The incredible deepfake mustache content in this video was made by

CORRECTION: Lenin did not order the photo of Lenin and Trotsky altered. Stalin ordered it. My mistake! Even this video about misinformation contains misinformation.

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[austinmcconnell]

Somebody tweeted a video of my face on Keanu Reeves the other day. It was a sad experience for all parties involved.

[calocaerus]

small correction: Lenin did not remove Trotsky from pictures, that was Stalin ... again

[thisisnancybot]

John’s YouTube game has been so strong since quitting social media. Like, I have loved all of his recent videos

[kieleyevatt]

John over here replying to tons of comments probably to fill the void that social media once occupied is honestly really nice

[RangerRuby]

That Deepfake at the beginning of the video freaked me out so much. I was like, wait... Mustache and Hank on the same person? Wait, wasn't this video a few months ago... and... Ohhhh! It's a Deepfake!

[ephemeraldivinity]

The first superimposed image shows how much John and Hank actually look like each other

[osud]

Hi John, don't come back to social media... It still sucks.

[pinkysaurusrawr]

The first five seconds of this is SO UPSETTING JOHN

[FutureNow]

Scarred by the first few seconds of this video.

[ThePuppyTurtle]

What's worse: The ability to fake anything, or the ability to plausibly claim anything is faked?

[patblack]

"...or images of you anyway" *Well saved xD*

[Richie_Godsil]

Always employ healthy skepticism and the humility to admit that you can *and have been* fooled

[johnnyharris]

I loved all the examples you used in this. Made the whole thing so powerful.

[knighsthyme]

Throwback to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thinking there were real fairies because those two young girls made a pre-deep fake ‘deep fake’ photo series where they said they played with fairies in the woods but really they were just paper cutouts lmao

[smartereveryday]

Dang good video John. Also, I'm glad to see you're on team Juicy Pear Jelly Belly.

[vlogbrothers]

2. Many of you have asked some version of, "SHOULD WE PANIC?" No, but it's certainly true that disinformative images warp our understanding of reality, and we need to build better systems to protect against that warping. But when information flows freely, what Stalin did with images becomes harder, not easier. I do think that we need to build institutions (and build trust in those institutions) that can help us sort good information from bad, just as we have to build institutions we can trust that will help us to do things we lack expertise in--for example, we have institutions that predict the weather, which is very helpful to those of us who are not meteorologists.
4. CORRECTION: Lenin did not order the photo of Lenin and Trotsky altered. Stalin ordered it. My mistake! Even this video about misinformation contains misinformation.
Thanks for watching. And thanks for being careful consumers of images.
-John

[JoannaVolavka]

When I experience something and say it feels "like a movie" it's usually because it's something so strange that it crosses into surreal, and the best way my brain can approach it is to compare it to fiction, not because I believe the fiction over the reality. Though I can see the other side, too, I suppose. Either way, technology is blurring the lines between "real" and "artificial" in ways we can only imagine.

[SapphWolf]

Ok, I have said the phrase "It felt like I was in a movie." but it was not to convey how "real" it was but how "surreal" it was. The kind of event that simply doesn't happen to your average person more than once or twice in their entire lives, if ever.

[tylersmith]

I fundamentally disagree with the statement that people compare extreme events to movies to make them sound “more real”. Typically it’s just the opposite. Most of us have never been in and never thought we would be in a plane crash so if we are it suddenly seems jarringly out of place as if it isn’t real, like a movie.

[corhydron]

Serious props for talking about this, especially the last bit, and not once uttering the word 'Baudrillard'.