In this week, we visited an exhibition at RMIT gallery called “This Hideous Replica”, which focuses on a future where algorithmics are increasingly intertwined with our lives. Before visiting the exhibition, I found its name resonating with me, especially the word “replica”. I felt it symbolises parallels between human and technology. At the exhibition, the curator elaborated that “replica” could be anything produced by AI that possesses traits drawn from the reality – whether it is someone, something, or some places that physically exist. This blending of the artificial with the real creates an unsettling, almost eerie feeling because you’re confronted with something that looks so familiar yet remains fabricated. It’s like seeing a photo of yourself doing something you’ve never done, and that dissonance between the real and the unreal evokes a sense of strangeness, even repulsion.

This idea resonated with me so much because I just heard a heartbreaking AI scandal while I was in China over the break. The scandals were about an AI technology, Deepfake, which can digitally alter a person’s face, so they appear to be someone else. Deepfake can create extremely convincing photos and videos, which has caused a lot of concerns around scepticism, spread of misinformation, and privacy. This technology hasn’t come to public’s attention until this month when the scandals were exposed in Korea. In the scandal, we see that the faces of many females – including a lot of underaged girls – were manipulated to be on porn scenes. What is even more scary is that these deepfakes have been spread to an incredibly number of people; just on one online group alone on Telegram, there were over 220,000 members who have exchanged these fake footages. The leader of the South Korea’s Advocacy Centre for Online Sexual Abuse victims (ACOSAV), Park Seonghye, said that “With the latest deepfake technology there is now so much more footage than there used to be, and we’re worried it’s only going to increase” (BBC 2024).

It is just heartbreaking seeing young girls being terrified by the explicit photos they saw on the internet that they have never taken before, viewed by millions of other people, even by someone who are close to them in real life. At moments like this, I always couldn’t help to wonder: what good would it bring to have a technology that can change a person’s face so convincingly? Should technologies like this even exist? Aren’t they just giving potential criminals opportunities to take actions? Why aren’t there enough laws to regulate these technologies? I’ve been angry for the past week because of this, and to some extent, visiting the exhibition of “This Hideous Replica” let me know how many ways there are for expressions. Although I wasn’t able to understand all of the artworks, looking at some of them who condemn a hideous future of AI manipulating everything let me feel calm and relief. I couldn’t quite explain why I felt that way, but I am thankful for it.

References:

RMIT Gallery (2024) This Hideous Replica, RMIT Gallery, accessed 9 September 2024. https://rmitgallery.com/exhibitions/this-hideous-replica/

Choi L and Mackenzie J (3 September 2024) ‘Inside the deepfake porn crisis engulfing Korean schools’, BBC, accessed 9 September 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpdlpj9zn9go