From innocuous cartoon tricks to realistic AI shots - the line between real and fictional has never been more blurred, and the consequences of that confusion are only beginning to be understood
Anyone who watched cartoons as a child surely remembers how hilarious it was when Jerry outwits Tom and hits him on the head with a hammer, causing a lump like a carrot to pop out of his forehead. Or when the Runner Bird makes a sudden turn, and the Coyote flies into the abyss, takes a few more steps through the air until he realizes that there is no more ground below him, he remains floating for a second until both he and the viewer remember that there is gravity, and with a characteristic whistle, he disappears into the abyss and splashes on the bottom. Coyote, Tom and the others survived everything - literally survived. But that's why there are recorded cases of children who failed miserably trying to imitate them.
This led to the fact that in some societies they shortened scenes that could have a bad effect on children. In Britain, for example, they censored episodes in which cartoon characters smoke. In Sweden, more aggressive cartoons were happily replaced by Zagreb cartoons Professor Balthazar, who did not solve problems with violence but with science. Or Bolek and Lolek, whose antics were harmless and mostly in accordance with physics.
Then we got artificial intelligence and the ability to make what is impossible in reality as a realistic video. Well, today we see dogs that prevent small children from sticking their fingers in the socket, families that befriend a wolf or lynx whose cub they previously saved, or cars and motorcycles that in an incredible way avoid fatal collisions. Such recordings have flooded social networks, are mixed with authentic clips and create an information fog in which it is no longer easy to distinguish what is real and what is "drawn".
Such digital deceptions do not classically belong to "fake news" because they do not try to trick us with a lie as news. But they can do similar damage. Even when we rationally know that something is fictional, the subconscious mind remembers the scene as if it were real. Partly because of the documentary look of the footage, partly because we watch most of those videos superficially, without thinking about authenticity, especially if we like what we see.
The most successful examples go viral because the algorithm recognizes that people watch them longer and with more interest, so it automatically offers them to others. And our brains have evolved over millions of years to believe what our eyes see, and only in the last few decades have we been trying to learn that this may not always be true. With cartoons, it was easier - after all, it is a caricature. Here the characters are real.
One of the simplest tests of authenticity is the question: who is filming and why is he not responding? If danger appears in front of the camera, either for the person filming it or for the person in the frame, the natural reaction is to help, not to continue filming. However, we are used to cameras being everywhere and people recording everything, so we rarely ask ourselves that basic question - why does a dog save a child, and not a person holding a phone and calmly watching as he is put in danger.
As technology advances, the greatest skill will not be creating realistic video, but the ability to recognize what is not real. Just as we have had to learn not to believe every news story on the internet, and we haven't quite mastered that either, we will have to learn not to believe everything we see.
The problem arises when doubt becomes a basic reflex. If we stop trusting any video, it opens up a new kind of defense: any criminal can simply claim that the video is fake and generated by artificial intelligence. The burden of proof then shifts to whoever posted the video.
In that world, the line between reality and fiction will no longer be a technical issue, but a matter of trust. And trust, unlike an algorithm, is much harder to generate.
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A black picture and the breakdown of the rule of law subscribeThe archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
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