Think the recent kerfluffle over deepfakes is something new? Guess again.
Concern about deceptively edited photos feels like a very modern anxiety, yet a century ago similar worries were being litigated...
Portrait photography gave rise to an industry of photo 'retouching' – analog 'beauty filters' – to flatter subjects in a way portrait painters once did. This trend lead to questions about technology distorting our perceptions of beauty, reality and truth:
Other commercial applications of photo retouching emerged: in 1911 tourists visiting Washington D.C. could acquire fake photographs of themselves posing with then President of the United States William Taft. This troubled Government officials. Upon discovering the practice in 1911, a United States Attorney ordered it stopped.
The following year a fugitive - wanted for people trafficking - was found in possession of a fake photo posing with President Taft, it was reported he'd used it to buy the trust of his victims:
That this seemingly benign practice had been weaponized prompted some to demand it be regulated against abuse. The justice department prepared a law, that was introduced by then Senator Henry Cabot Lodge - who'd similarly been troubled after reportedly finding a photograph of himself with someone he'd never met.
Now I have to wonder if Grandpa really did befriend a bigfoot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11, @01:40PM (4 children)
Taft? Buy trust? In who? My great grandmother? Centenarian's? Taft died in the 30s. The 1930s...assuming someone became politically aware at 10 and somehow thought Taft was the man, that would make them at least 100 years old...
(Score: 3, Touché) by PiMuNu on Friday October 11, @01:53PM (2 children)
FTFA:
> The following year
i.e. this happened in 1912.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11, @06:59PM (1 child)
Oh crap. I apparently didn't read the summary or the article well enough. Lame.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday October 11, @07:03PM
Yeah, we've all done it at some time or other....
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday October 11, @02:15PM
In the 30's?? Wouldn't that just be 'yo mama'?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday October 11, @04:46PM
This was in the '60s, before digital photography, let alone AI.
I freaked my mom out with a photo of her car with its window broken. It was just markings on the negative with a sharpie and making the print from that. Shrunk myself a la "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" taking a photo a photo of myself by my ham radio receiver.
It's just a lot easier today with Photoshop or GIMP.
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday October 11, @06:11PM
There used to be some stuff that was fake and most people shared a common, common sense reality to tell true from BS apart.
Now thanks to AI, soon everything will be fake or questionable a best. There will be no shared truth anymore, so everybody will perceive and believe a different reality.
When there's a little fakery and the majority of everything else is understood by the majority of people to be the same true reality, a few people fall victim to the fakery. When nothing can be trusted anymore, the entire society collapses.