Greetings from rainy (but warm) Baltimore, Md. I'm here for another speech about AI. With luck, I'll get back to NYC in time for the Rangers game tonight.
In the news: For the fashion industry, the Met Gala is like WWDC, I/O, and Build combined. Everyone who's anyone is dressed to impress and walking the red carpet (which, to match this year's "the garden of time" dress code, meant wearing white and green).
If you're looking for professionally curated lists of the best-dressed stars, Vogue, Vanity Fair, or the New York Times have awesome pictorials. Unsurprisingly, these traditional sources had a bit of competition from deepfakes this year, and several hyper-realistic deepfake images of celebrities like Katy Perry and Rihanna garnered millions of views.
The images, while striking, were quickly identified as fake due to discrepancies in event details and the absence of any fashion magazine coverage of these looks. Interestingly, both Perry and Rihanna engaged with these viral posts, adding layers of complexity to the narrative.
These realistic (yet fictional) images were easy to generate, easy to share, and (in this case) easy to identify, but the celebrities played along. Where does this go? Should Riri or Katy have denounced the deepfakes and sued the creators for NIL payments? They didn't, because they liked the images (as evidenced by their interactions with the posts). What if they didn't like them? What if they were blatantly infringing on someone's intellectual property rights?
Clearly, you can have it both ways, and that's exactly where we find ourselves. These images are considered "good" deepfakes, while others (depending on who you ask) will be considered "bad" deepfakes. A moving goalpost? At the very least.
As always your thoughts and comments are both welcome and encouraged. Just reply to this email. -s
ABOUT SHELLY PALMER
Shelly Palmer is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and CEO of The Palmer Group, a consulting practice that helps Fortune 500 companies with technology, media and marketing. Named he covers tech and business for , is a regular commentator on CNN and writes a popular . He's a , and the creator of the popular, free online course, . Follow or visit .
