Freedom of information stands as our protector; it acts as the principle that underscores our modern-day understanding of democracy, justice, and autonomy, protecting us from the ills of arbitrary state action and persecution. Free information serves to protect us from acts of injustice, acting as a watchdog against chauvinism and oppression, allowing us to live freely alongside one another in a productive and fruitful society. However, notwithstanding these fundamental prerequisites to a just society, the mismanagement and misrepresentation of information via disinformation can act as an instrument for exploitation and manipulation. Deepfakes are a recent addition to this arsenal of potential obfuscation and deception, opening the door to allowing people to be deprived of their individual liberty and livelihood, as well as to the distortion of democracy and human will as we know it. Deepfakes can allow a well-equipped minority to override and overwhelm the will of a populace, depriving society of its ability to “preserve and promote the dignity and fundamental rights of the individual”, as precluded by the OHCHR [1]. Deepfakes have the potential to significantly distort our societal mechanisms by perpetuating the proliferation and dissemination of misinformation and disrupting the foundations on which our fundamental freedoms are built, namely the universal freedom of information.
The most basic of individual freedoms come in the form of preservation of our liberty, the safeguarding of our livelihoods, and sanctuary from arbitrary action from the state among a myriad of others [2]. Our personal identities and individualism are what make us unique and deepfakes are a minacious weapon, impugning said individual’s freedom and sacrosanct right to liberty. Many leading philosophical and legal theorists propose the notion that us as a society should treat such freedoms as an ontologically dominant concepts, protecting them with no expense spared in their enforcement and this can be no better evidence than through the medium of preexisting legislation. Take S2 Fraud Act 2006 for example, which already criminalises the offence of Fraud by False Representation [3], upholding fundamental civil freedoms and the right to individuality. In what way does this offence differ from the misuse of deepfakes? The answer is it doesn’t. Both acts deprive an individual of their right to individuality, liberty, and autonomy, precluding them from being best able to fulfill themselves within society. However, when we look under the surface, it actually goes much deeper than this; not only do deepfakes abate individual’s freedoms in the same way as fraud, but they actually go so far as to diminish and impugn one’s social reputation and image, which thereby can open the floodgates to self-fulfilling of declining mental health or financial status, impeding on one’s social welfare and quality of life to a grave extent. Therefore, if the aforementioned legislation does not bear precedent enough for the criminalisation and subsequent punishment of misappropriated deepfakes, then the empirical welfare corollaries unremittingly do.
However, some theorists contrast this proposal with the basic assertion that misinformation and disinformation already roam rampant in our increasingly online world. We dare not address modern issues like that of hate speech if we first cannot even eradicate online hate speech and abuse. From March 2019 to March 2020 alone, an estimated 764,000 children faced some form of cyberbullying in the UK alone, let alone the number of adults which faced such abuse, whereas in July 2019, there were some 49,081 [5] deepfakes online globally, a much lesser figure. We continue to allow misinformation and vituperative content to be spread freely online with little legal ramifications, even for a nefarious act like hate speech, so what harm is there in allowing deepfakes? Our society, and more importantly, our children, face far more petrifying and detrimental abuse on both a wide-reaching and daily basis, eroding both their averred autonomy and accordance. Notwithstanding the baneful by-products of hate speech, we simply cannot ignore the issue of deepfakes; the number of deepfakes online increased by some 330% from 2019 to 2020 [5], with this growth not seeming to slow down with there now being an estimated 500,000 deepfakes proliferating online [6], a 918% increase in only 2 years. Whilst we should most certainly place greater emphasis on addressing the plague that is hate-speech, this in no way means that we should diverge our attention entirely from the rapidly emerging technology that is deepfakes, with both issues having the capacity to infirm one’s mental welfare and civil liberty.
Additional corroboration of this assertion can be seen in the principle of democratic order and the ability of deepfakes to vacillate public opinion and manipulate the will of the general population. The coalescence of unfettered and commensurate access to information during elections is an utter vitality and fundamental prerequisite to the maintenance and assurance of democratic egalitarianism and, ergo, independent justice. The misuse of deepfake technology can be employed during electoral campaigns, defacing, and impugning the character of whichever political official is targeted by such discord. We already know the power that the manipulation of facts and individuals can exert over what are intended to be universal, democratic elections via instances like that of Soviet Russia. Take 1917 and Lenin’s dissolution of the democratic constituent assembly [7], and we can immediately draw some incredibly stark parallels to what we may witness with deepfakes, namely, the decimation of dissidents and the manipulation of the majority [7]; deepfakes allow those with the technology to deface their political adversaries via disingenuous impersonation, whilst also feeding and controlling the general population through the dissemination of propaganda. A totalitarian’s dream. Whilst obviously a digital means of manipulation, as opposed to physical, deepfakes still have the potential to directly facilitate the ascension of corrupt individuals to power, opening the door for the incessant persecution, prejudice, and ill-treatment of specific vulnerable social, ethnic, or national groups. Thus, there is an undeniable and unquestionable need for legislative controls on the creation and distribution of deepfake videos.
Per contra, some theorists contend that deepfakes are simply a bi-product of hyperbolic human development, a necessary evil. Nozick contends state intervention ought to be actioned in the most minimalist of fashions, only serving to protect our most basic human rights [8]. Any intervention beyond these means is actually an injustice to society and an erosion and impunity on our basic human welfare. Modern-day politics is already riddled with misinformation and deception and so what more would the criminalisation of deepfakes do to address this. Deepfakes are supply another medium for which this deception can be actioned, and one should not shoot the messenger, but address the issue at its heart. Take the party gate scandal; not only did members of the active governmental political party breach a series of regulatory measures, but the prime minister himself did so as well before then corroborating with his peers to first, cover up their actions, and secondly, mislead parliament as a whole [9]. Deepfakes are simply yet another case study for the corrupt tendencies of not just British, but global politics and are not the issue itself, but merely a symptom of the fatal disease contaminating modern-day politics.
Thus, the development and recent advancement of deepfake technology is in fact a mere bi-product of the underlying lacklustre nature of our modern-day judiciary and executive and one which has the potential to terrorise not only individual freedoms and human rights, but to manipulate and disregard the will of wider population, leaving them subject to unilateral malfeasance and impropriety from their supposed representatives, coming with grave indemnities to personal welfare as well as to the integrity of wider civil procedure. However, whilst deepfakes are a mere symptom of a wider, systemic issue, this does not mean that we need not remedy or redress such developments; legislative action and the criminalisation of deepfakes, whilst not an entirely conclusive remedy, will go some way to safeguarding people’s right to individualism, with the costs of such action being by far in a way, countenanced by the aforementioned protection from political falsification and manipulation.
Bibliography:
[1] OHCHR | About democracy and human rights [Internet]. OHCHR. Available from: https://www.ohchr.org/en/about-democracy-and-human-rights
[2] United Nations. Human Rights [Internet]. United Nations. 2020. Available from: https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/human-rights#:~:text=Human%20rights%20include%20the%20right
[3] legislation.gov.uk. Fraud Act 2006 [Internet]. Legislation.gov.uk. 2019. Available from: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/contents
[4] Kulevska A. Cyberbullying Statistics for the UK [2022] [Internet]. CyberCrew. 2022. Available from: https://cybercrew.uk/blog/cyberbullying-statistics-uk/
[5] Deepfakes and legal implications: Seeing is not believing [Internet]. Clifford Chance. [cited 2023 Jul 10]. Available from: https://www.cliffordchance.com/insights/resources/blogs/talking-tech/en/articles/2020/12/deepfakes-and-legal-implications–seeing-is-not-believing.html
[6] Ulmer A, Tong A, Ulmer A, Tong A. Deepfaking it: America’s 2024 election collides with AI boom. Reuters [Internet]. 2023 May 31; Available from: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/deepfaking-it-americas-2024-election-collides-with-ai-boom-2023-05-30
[7] Nozick R. Distributive Justice. Philosophy & Public Affairs [Internet]. 1973 ;3(1):45–126. Available from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2264891
[8] Privileges Committee investigation into Boris Johnson [Internet]. Institute for Government. Available from: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/privileges-committee-investigation-boris-johnson
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