The pace at which social media videos go viral and then are forgotten about makes 24-hour news cycles seem downright glacial. So you’ll wonder why we’re bringing up this TikTok clip from two years ago, where comedian and actor Kevin Hart helped blow up a creator by acknowledging how much the guy actually looks like him.
First of all, if you are regular on social, you know how something older becomes viral again and the video of the “Zambia man” who looks exactly like Kevin has resurfaced on Tiktok. But what a difference two year makes.
Tiktok and its AI filters, which seem to get better and more real by the week (don’t believe us? check out this video The Root created a few weeks ago), has showed us what deep fake really looks like. So in the past two years since Hart’s impersonator showed up on Tiktok with his convincing filter (that’s the consensus) we’ve seen deep fakes that make his attempt look like child’s play. And what’ scary is it’s only getting worse. Buckle up.
It’s April Fool’s Day, and this might be the last year that April 1 is truly funny anymore because of how quickly artificial intelligence is being developed. If old school lookalikes like Bronx Obama were entertaining, the current era of deepfake videos–which use algorithms to create images, video and even dialogue that’s nearly indistinguishable from the actual person being mimicked–is downright scary. And with new forms of AI growing more powerful seemingly by the day, April Fools’ just might take on a more pernicious meaning in the future.
Think a video going viral of a comedian making a racist or misogynistic joke during a performance that never happened. Think political operatives making videos of their opponents giving out false information on voting rules in a state like Florida, where a newly-created election police force has already locked up people who had been told they were eligible to vote when they apparently weren’t. Think the ability to manufacture video evidence of just about anybody, doing or saying anything, and harnessing social media to spread that footage to as many people–or to a specific, targeted few–in seconds.
April Fool’s indeed.