DEEPFAKES
MARCH 5TH, 2026
Went to a screening at Somerset House this week hosted by Identity 2.0 of DEEPFAKES by engineer and computational artist Ahnjili ZhuParris. I hadn’t really spent much time looking into this world before and honestly it was pretty alarming once you start digging into it.
Some things that genuinely surprised me:
The speakers traced image manipulation all the way back to Marie Antoinette's political portraits. So this isn't new, the scale and speed just make it a completely different thing now.
A Sora generated clip of MLK circulated online. His family had enough visibility to contact OpenAI and get it removed. Most people don't have that option. That feels like the whole problem in one example.
Explicit non-consensual deepfake porn using AOC's likeness has circulated online.
Denmark is exploring legal frameworks that would give people rights over their own likeness in synthetic media. I hadn't even thought about needing that until now.
Left thinking this is one of those things that's going to matter a lot more than most people realize right now.
Would love to know if anyone's been following this space and where you think responsibility actually sits.
The event was hosted by Identity 2.0, a London-based creative tech studio imagining better digital futures by transforming research into films, tools, and public conversations. Their work explores more inclusive stories about our relationship to technology. They also released a new zine through Metalabel that digs into some of these questions. Collect it for free here.
