From Deepfake to Deeptruth: Toward a Technological Resignification with Social and Activist Uses

Deepfake is an emerging media species that involves the use of technologies such as artificial intelligence and deep learning to produce audiovisual materials and make false content look or be interpreted as true. This chapter focuses on its possibilities for use in social campaigns, social criticism, and political activism, through the in-depth case study applied to a video that artificially recreates the image of Mexican journalist Javier Valdez ¿ murdered in 2017 ¿ to denounce violence against journalists in Mexico. When analyzing the technical procedures, ethical transparency, discourse, context, and critical sense of this communicative practice, we find that it produces fissures in both the imaginary about violence in Mexico and in the construction of epistemological axes for the academic study of deepfake and its evolution toward deeptruth. We find a resignification of the phenomenon since it shows us the possibility of revealing a deeptruth through a deepfake. © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Manuel Cebral-Loureda, Elvira G. Rincón-Flores and Gildardo Sanchez-Ante.