What is Synthetic Media?

Synthetic media is a blanket term for any media that is artificially generated, modified, or manipulated, especially with artifical intelligence in the modern age. The earliest devices for synthetic media however date back to ancient Greece, with inventions from Hero of Alexandria designed to make sound, write text, and play music. They are all considered synthetic as the noises and sounds they create were dependent on their designs and the fact that those devices could not create their own content.

Deepfaking

Deepfaking is the use of technology to create fake video or audio recordings that look and feel real, and is probably most peoples only experience with synthetic media. Its created with the help of technology called deep learning, which to put in a simple way acts and thinks like a human; doing such things as translating language, making decisions, learn without any supervision, and most important: recognizing/ copying speech. The technology of deepfakes is mostly just used for jokes and hasnt progressed very far, but in the future its pretty possible we can't tell the difference between what people in the media say or do as long as it isnt recorded live, but who cares for now since making people say dumb things is pretty fun.

Should we worry about it?

In its current state deepfakes arent too realistic and you still need the audio to be coming from a source as that cant be faked, but in the future maybe they progress to a point so advanced that they are impossible, or at least very difficult, to tell if fake. For now however we can just spend time making people sing songs or doing random stuff and not worry about our entire lives being fake.