Watching Deepfaked Movies Can Induce False Memories, Study Discovers
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You might dismiss them as mere cons, but watching digitally manipulated videos—or deepfakes—could have a lasting impact on your memory. Though, for better or worse, the mind can be just as malleable when reading deceptful texts.
About half of the participants (49%) in a study of 436 people “remembered” non-existent movie scenes different actors to be the real deal after a team of researchers, led by Gillian Murphy of the University College Cork in Ireland, showed them the clips.
Startlingly, “many participants [remembered] the fake remake as better than the original film,” notes the team in a newly published paper in PLOS One. The scientists wanted to assess the effect of deepfakes on the memory.
In one instance, subjects were bamboozled into remembering Will Smith, and not Keanu Reeves, to have embodied the role of Neo in The Matrix.
They were also shown scenarios of Brad Pitt in The Shining, Charlize Theron as Captain Marvel, and Chris Pratt as Indiana Jones.
Participants viewed clips or descriptions of movie remakes. Some were real studio remakes (e.g. Carrie, Tomb Raider), while others were fictitious deepfakes: Brad Pitt in The Shining, Will Smith in the Matrix, Charlize Theron in Captain Marvel, Chris Pratt in Indiana Jones. pic.twitter.com/AhXnhQpaZY
— Gillian Murphy (@gillysmurf) July 13, 2023
Some even recalled the fictitious scenes to be more superior than the originals.
Before you wave a cross in front of every digitally-altered spoof or malicious clip you encounter online, you should know that misleading text descriptions can also conjure up fake memories just as effectively. Deepfake technology “is not uniquely placed to distort movie memories,” the team acknowledges.
That’s both a good and bad thing, as The Daily Beast points out. It means deepfakes aren’t as powerful as they have us believe them to be, but it also means we have to be equally cautious with content derived from a more conventional nature.
At the same time, researchers note participants’ overall discomfort with the replacement of actors in deepfakes.
“Common concerns were disrespecting artistic integrity, disrupting the shared social experience of films, and a discomfort at the control and options this technology would afford,” they elaborate.
Murphy tells Euronews that the group intends to create deepfakes “related to politics” next, so as to see how they may affect the memory and perceptions of voters. And those, almost without a doubt, could expose some scarier consequences.
[via Euronews and The Daily Beast, images via various sources]
