Where Did the Deepfakes Go?

For months, media specialists, pundits, and analysts were warning us to brace for an onslaught of memes and other forms of propaganda that would flood our feeds this US election season. While there certainly have been a comparable amount of memes and videos as in 2016, the use of deepfakes — a form of artificial intelligence to make images of fake events — never quite materialized. Why?

In this wide-ranging conversation, I talk to artist and technologist An Xiao Mina about the absence of deepfakes and what this might tell us about the media ecosystem now and going forward.

This conversation is part of our Sunday Edition on Propaganda.

The music featured this episode is a new track by Command Dos titled "Proof."

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