"Donald Trump's rise tracks the decline of that thing we once agreed to call reality. He cemented his place in the popular imagination with the advent of reality television, a genre that promised authenticity, even as the supposedly unscripted scenes were carefully manipulated by producers. On The Apprentice, which debuted in 2004, Trump was the embodiment of a culture just beginning to blur the line between what was real and what merely looked like it was."
"The deepfake is the most disconcerting frontier of the AI revolution. Fabricated clips are rendered with such precision that they can make anyone appear to say or do anything. This technology stands to upend a basic assumption of modern life. For more than a century, humans have treated film as the ultimate proof of reality, the mechanical witness that doesn't lie. Deepfakes exploit the instinct to trust what we see, counterfeits capable of warping emotion and implanting lies."
"In his second term as president, Trump-now with the help of artificial intelligence-is completing the revolution that made him. Over the weekend, he posted a video of himself piloting a fighter jet that dumps excrement on protesters. The clip was cartoonish, meant to amuse his followers and outrage his adversaries. This might seem like an ephemeral bit of trollish fun, but it is an example of an alarming pattern."
Donald Trump's public persona emerged alongside reality television, which blurred authenticity and performance. He has translated that aesthetic into political influence, using manipulated media to shape perception. In his presidency he has amplified those tactics with artificial intelligence, posting doctored videos that amuse supporters and inflame opponents. Deepfakes now threaten the long-held trust in film as reliable evidence by producing hyperreal fabrications. Persistent circulation of manipulated clips and images cultivates epistemic collapse, rendering once-dependable evidence suspect and fostering widespread distrust, confusion, and the molding of public belief to serve political ends.
Read at The Atlantic
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