Call: “Designed to Deceive? The Philosophy of Deepfakes” Topical Collection for Synthese

Call for Papers

Designed to Deceive? The Philosophy of Deepfakes
A Topical Collection in Synthese
An International Journal for Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science

Guest Editor: Dan Cavedon-Taylor, The Open University

Submission deadline: July 30th 2022

TOPICAL COLLECTION DESCRIPTION:

Deepfakes are fabricated video and/or audio recordings created by machine-learning methods. They are highly convincing in their appearance and are widely anticipated to be used for malign, deceptive purposes. Indeed, malicious use of the technology is already a reality:

  • In April 2020, members of Extinction Rebellion created a deepfake of the Belgian Prime Minister, Sophie Wilmès, that depicted the PM to be ‘admitting’ a link between deforestation and COVID-19.
  • In late 2019, a deepfake was used to defraud via telephone a UK-based energy firm’s CEO of $243,000.
  • Notoriously, one of the first uses of deepfakes was as a way to ‘face-swap’ images of both celebrities and private individuals into pornographic videos, an activity that is currently outlawed in few jurisdictions.

Despite actual and potential harms, positive uses of the technology are emerging and more are conceivable:

  • Deepfake technology has been used to recreate the ‘unheard’ speech that former US President, John F. Kennedy was due to deliver at Dallas Trade Mart on the day he was assassinated.
  • In the future, deepfake medical images might be used to train both artificial intelligences and medical professionals to better identify diseases in the population where gathering actual images would be invasive to patients, costly or otherwise impractical.
  • Someone who has lost their voice might use deepfake text-to-speech technology in order to communicate with others via a voice that is recognisably their own.

Deepfakes thus have the capacity to radically help, as well as harm. Despite growing interest among philosophers, only a handful of papers on deepfakes have reached publication; key works include Floridi (2018), Rini (2020), Kerner & Risse (2021) and Fallis (in press). Most of these focus on the epistemic harms of deepfakes, specifically their potential to mislead the public in political contexts and upend our trust in photographic media (cf. Hopkins 2012; Cavedon-Taylor 2013). Some attention has also been paid to deepfake pornography (Öhman  2019; Young 2021). While both topics are fertile grounds for philosophical reflection, there are substantially many other issues surrounding deepfakes that are germane targets for philosophical reflection. This Topical Collection aims to be a cutting-edge resource for those researching philosophical perspectives on the technology, one that examines the full variety of ways that deepfakes might impact our lives and be relevant for understanding a range of phenomena.

APPROPRIATE TOPICS FOR SUBMISSION INCLUDE, AMONG OTHERS:

  • The harmful effects that deepfakes might have for democracy or trust in photographic media.
  • The relevance of deepfakes for understanding epistemic dependence on people, artefacts or technology.
  • The nature of deepfake pornography, including in what respects it is injurious to the depicted individual(s) or an invasion of their privacy.
  • The nature of beneficial use cases, including, but not limited to: assistive uses; creative uses; educational, historical or research-based uses; clinical and therapeutic uses, etc.
  • Distinctions that might be drawn among harmful and/or beneficial use cases and how these could best be taxonomised.
  • The relevance of deepfakes for our classifications of pictorial kinds and our understanding of the nature of depictive representation more generally. For instance, are deepfakes a sui generis  pictorial kind or is their difference merely one of degree from standard photographic imagery?
  • The fact that deepfakes have their causal origin in generative neural network architectures and the relevance of this for their use cases, potential consequences or our understanding of them more generally.
  • The relevance of deepfakes for issues surrounding conspiracy theorising, echo chambers and filter bubbles, fake news, social media and the spread of misinformation online.
  • The relevance of deepfakes for more traditional epistemic themes and concepts, e.g., the nature of deception, epistemic responsibility, information transmission, etc.

Please note: Synthese‘s Aims and Scope cover issues in normative theory, but only insofar as these contribute to the study of epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science. So while we welcome papers that tackle deepfakes from an ethical, aesthetic or feminist perspective, authors are advised to note carefully the journal’s scope and should take care to frame their paper’s theses accordingly.

For further information, please contact the guest editor: dan.cavedon-taylor@open.ac.uk

The deadline for submissions is July 30th 2022

Submissions via: https://www.editorialmanager.com/synt/default.aspx

REFERENCES:

Cavedon-Taylor, D. (2013). “Photographically Based Knowledge.” Episteme  10 (3): 283-297.

Fallis, D. (in press). “The Epistemic Threat of Deepfakes.” Philosophy and Technology. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-020-00419-2#Fn21

Floridi, L. (2018). “Artificial Intelligence, Deepfakes and the Future of Ectypes.” Philosophy and Technology 31 317-321.

Hopkins, R. (2012). “Factive Pictorial Experience: What’s Special About Photographs?” Noûs 46 (4): 709-731.

Kerner, C. & Risse, M. (2021). “Beyond Porn and Discreditation: Epistemic Promises and Perils of Deepfake Technology in Digital Lifeworlds.” Moral Philosophy and Politics 8 (10): 81-108.

Öhman, C. (2019). “Introducing the Pervert’s Dilemma: A Contribution to the Critique of Deepfake Pornography.” Ethics and Information Technology 22: 133-140.

Rini, R. (2020). “Deepfakes and the Epistemic Backstop.” Philosophers’ Imprint 20 (24): 1-16.

Young, G. (2021). Fictional Immorality and Immoral Fiction. Rowman and Littlefield.


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