Don’t Believe Your Eyes: Deepfakes Could Haunt PR Soon

Deepfakes, or Artificial Intelligence-generated synthetic videos, have been on the crisis communications periphery since 2017.

Although many deepfake videos have circulated imitating celebrities and politicians, it may seem unclear as of yet whether communications professionals in every industry should be prepared for a reputation nosedive as a result of the harmful tech—or whether deepfakes should only be of concern to those repping the rich and famous.

Impact of deepfakes on brand reputation

Per Google Trends, the term deepfake made its way into the mainstream in February 2018, when Pornhub and Twitter announced they would ban all videos that swapped adult actors’ faces for celebrities.