Catfishing and How Tech May Influence It

Catfishing is not entirely uncommon in today's society. In our class we had about 3 people who had experience it in some form or fashion. We had a student who had done the catfishing, one who was catfished, and one whose likeness was used to catfish someone else. Altogether I think everyone agrees that it is not a good experience to be on the receiving end of.

So how is tech going to influence this going forward? Ever heard of Deep Fake? Probably not, it is not talked about a lot. This is partially because it is relatively new but I also think people are afraid of it and do not wish to discuss it and promote it. Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa are three of the top tier AI assistants out there, and they all sounds like you put a mouth on your laptop and asked it to talk back to you. Deep Fake sounds like you, or me, or Dr. Johnson. We talked briefly in class how other software can be used to alter a video to make it seem like you are saying something else when during the recording you were talking about something entirely different. Deep Fake is a part of that. Now we can not only take someone else's picture, but we can now use a different voice on top of that, along with a video of someone sexier than you might be. For example from a male perspective, imagine you were talking to an entirely average person (or maybe ugly) over Skype, but the video you are seeing is of Emma Watson and it looks like she is the one talking and it sounds exactly like her. So now you go to meet up at the local Walgreens for your first date and you definitely are not looking at Emma Watson. This is an example of how tech is going to influence interpersonal communications and dating. You might also see this as a kind of kinky thing to do? But there is honestly just porn for that, let's be real.

So if in your class (for anyone reading who is not in the 9am), you had no one who had experienced catfishing, maybe see if you can find an account of it from someone who was. It is entirely unpleasant to be lied to about something like someone you think you are getting to be interested in romantically and then find out it was Steve from down the street who has pit stains on all of his shirts and reeks of cigarettes 24/7. This is the potential future we're looking at where it's going to become a skill to discern who is catfishing and who isn't.