UNEXPECTEDLY: Obama suggests ‘digital fingerprints’ to counter misinformation ‘so we know what’s true and what’s not true.’
The former president added that the deepfakes — digitally manipulated images, audio or video that appear legitimate — started with a version of him dancing, “saying dirty limericks” and similar kinds of activity.
“That technology’s here now,” continued Obama, who warned about the issue getting worse moving forward. “So, most immediately we’re going to have all the problems we had with misinformation before, [but] this next election cycle will be worse.”
He then suggested “digital fingerprints” to discern truth from misinformation.
“And the need for us, for the general public, I think to be more discriminating consumers of news and information, the need for us to over time develop technologies to create watermarks or digital fingerprints so we know what is true and what is not true,” he said. “There’s a whole bunch of work that’s going to have to be done there, but in the short term, it’s really going to be up to the American people to kind of say.”
Hey, remember when Obama’s comms shop tried to pretend he was the anti-1984 guy? Good times, good times.