All ‘Should Be Concerned’ on Fake Online Video, Says Adobe GC

Photoshop inventor Adobe is promoting its “content authenticity initiative” as an open, voluntary standard to thwart content manipulation for nefarious or criminal purposes, said Dana Rao, Adobe general counsel. “You can make videos and images that could be very lifelike” and difficult to differentiate between truth and fake, he told an Axios webinar Wednesday. “Everyone should be concerned," he said. “The basis of a democracy is a shared understanding of facts. If we can’t agree on what the facts are, we can’t do anything about policies like climate change.” It’s easy to edit videos and images “and create a fiction from a fact,” said Rao. “The problem with images and video is that people believe them. They believe them more than the written word.” People “can’t always trust what they see,” he said. “Years ago, you might have gotten an email from a bank. It asked you for your Social Security number, and you may have just typed it in and sent it away. You know better now. You know that some of these emails are fake, even if they have beautiful letterheads. People need to think that way about online content.”