I think the part of this that will be interesting, and that the legal system will have difficulty addressing, is what “inaccurate” means.
At any point in history, I could have written an article about why I believe that a prominent public figure worships the devil and is engaged in a plot to blow up the moon. As long as I didn’t attempt to back up my story with undisclosed facts (“I was allowed access to his email inbox, and now it’s clear to me that he’s trying to blow up the moon”) or lie about a hard fact (“he told me that he is going to blow up the moon”), I would be fine.
The gap for faked media is that you can blur the line between what I am saying about someone and what it looks like they’re saying themselves. So if I make a fake video that appears to be Obama cackling while he describes his plan to blow up the moon, and post it to my YouTube account… am I presenting it as if Obama said these things? Obama doesn’t generally publish content on random tech dudes’ YouTube channels. There’s a line somewhere where the presumption is that the content is faked, but I don’t know of any firm answers so far from the legal system on where they plan to draw that line.
At any point in history, I could have written an article about why I believe that a prominent public figure worships the devil and is engaged in a plot to blow up the moon. As long as I didn’t attempt to back up my story with undisclosed facts (“I was allowed access to his email inbox, and now it’s clear to me that he’s trying to blow up the moon”) or lie about a hard fact (“he told me that he is going to blow up the moon”), I would be fine.
The gap for faked media is that you can blur the line between what I am saying about someone and what it looks like they’re saying themselves. So if I make a fake video that appears to be Obama cackling while he describes his plan to blow up the moon, and post it to my YouTube account… am I presenting it as if Obama said these things? Obama doesn’t generally publish content on random tech dudes’ YouTube channels. There’s a line somewhere where the presumption is that the content is faked, but I don’t know of any firm answers so far from the legal system on where they plan to draw that line.