Old-time Irrealers and alert newcomers know that I’m a big fan of Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels. Indeed, this blog is named after one of his ideas from the novel Excession: the Irreal. I mention Banks because I was reading yet another article about “deep fakes” and how they mean the end of civilization, or something.
That reminded me of another of Banks’ Culture novels: The Player of Games. The backstory is too complicated to relate here—read the story, it’s great—but the initiating event is a bit of blackmail. That was supposed to be impossible in the Culture because, as Banks puts it,
Anybody could make up anything they wanted; sound, moving pictures, smell, touch…there were machines that did just that. […] Where nothing could be authenticated, blackmail became both pointless and impossible[.]
We are not yet, of course, at that level in the real world but the continuing evolution and perfection of deep fakes does suggest a [near] future where any evidence could be seamlessly manufactured. The usual reaction to that is that we’ll all be doomed to random false accusations making our lives miserable. But what if Banks was right and that future means that no one will have anything to fear because everyone will discount any evidence a blackmailer or other miscreant might offer as evidence of wrongdoing.
Sometimes, apparently, life really does imitate art.