The semiotic ideology of deepfakes
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https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8092216Keywords:
Deepfakes, semiotic ideology, fake, artificial intelligence, Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)Abstract
The article promotes a semiotically-oriented philosophy of communication, able to detect the ideologies of meaning that underpin the new technologies of symbolic exchange. Their evolution throughout history implies important alterations as regards the rhetoric of the fake. This is a constitutive element of the human species, yet its conditions are radically modified in the digital sphere and by the raise of artificial intelligence. The article focuses on the semiotic ideology of generative adversarial networks and their consequences in terms of production and reception of deepfakes. These disquieting new textual products are mostly seen as entertaining; yet, the article concludes, it is just a matter of time before humans will be unable to detect them. Semiotics is therefore called to urgently concentrate on the ‘epistemological crisis’ that will be brought about by advances in the digital fake.
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