From calls to meetings, all are becoming fakes!

Notwithstanding that, the Internet and social media platforms have become almost an inevitable part of our society, ‘fakes’ also have witnessed an alarming growth simultaneously along with them. Nothing is more dangerous than spreading them!

If word-of-mouth was the primary way misinformation spread in the early days of human life, what is new today is that it blows out to millions almost instantaneously with the single click of a button, without even having to speak to another person.

A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that falsehood diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and many times, by an order of magnitude.

According to a recent Unesco report, 85 per cent of people are worried about the influence of fake news on their fellow citizens, and 87 per cent say disinformation is a threat to politics in their country.

The survey also found that social media is now people's main source of news globally, with 56 per cent of people getting their stories from these platforms. However, there is little trust in social media, with 68 per cent saying it carries the most disinformation of all outlets.

With everyone using technology, it will become even more sophisticated with the passage of time. As a result, we will ever know if anything and everything we see or hear is real!

This may be a reason misinformation and disinformation remained a top issue for the second consecutive year in a row in the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting, underscoring their persistent threat to societal cohesion and governance, and exacerbating divisions within and between nations.

“The rise of fake news, the decline of fact-checking on social media, and the growth of deep fakes generated by artificial intelligence (AI) threaten to erode trust and deepen divisions between countries,” WEF said in a report just before its January 24 meeting in Davos.

Artificial intelligence automates the creation of fake news, generates web content by mimicking factual articles, and spreads misinformation about natural disasters, events such as elections, and crises like wars.

No doubt, from calls to meetings, all are becoming fakes now! How do we know that the person who is calling you to give you orders is your real boss? Deepfakes are now taking calls to a level of clumsiness, raising a question of whether the callers are genuine.

It’s not long ago that a British company confirmed it was the victim of a deepfake fraud after an employee was duped into sending $200 million (nearly £20 million) to fraudsters by an artificial intelligence-generated video call.

Earlier, an executive with a leading cryptocurrency exchange had revealed that fraudsters had used a sophisticated deepfake “hologram” of him to scam several of its projects. We cannot forget how some European mayors were initially fooled by a deepfake video call purporting to be with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

According to research by fact-checking organisations like Google, fake images churned out by AI are now spreading at an alarming rate, nearly matching the prevalence of those altered by traditional methods like Photoshop.

The WEF Davos meeting warned that as the computing power available to governments and technology companies continues to rise, there is a risk of greater surveillance on citizens by governments and businesses, posing risks to privacy.

“It is becoming increasingly difficult for people, governments, and companies to identify trustworthy information as more people rely on social media and the internet for information,” WEF said in the 100-page report.

However, the world forum is optimistic. If managed responsibly, the collection of data about citizens can provide better public services, but without effective legal safeguards in place, there is a risk data will be misused.

“Citizens are often unaware of how their data is collected, used and stored, limiting their ability to make informed decisions,” it said. And it will not be an exaggeration if someone says, “This is going to be like phishing scams on steroids. We’re living in strange times.”