First, go to this site and see how you go determining the real photograph from the photo-shopped one:
https://landing.adobe.com/en/na/products/creative-cloud/69308-real-or-photoshop/index.html
It fooled me too. Consider then the emerging significance of the ability of IT for reality manipulation:
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/technology-spurs-our-ability-deceive
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2019/11/technology-spurs-on-our-ability-to.html
“Caught between the forces of mainstream media and government propaganda it seems we can believe nothing we see or hear. Much of this problem is rooted in the agendas of large companies and those who control them. These companies have become so big and powerful that they now influence government's message and direction. Fake news and false flags have left many of us having a difficult time deciding what is real, adding to this is the rapidly growing ability of computers to generate and alter human images. This is all about to go to a whole new level.
Margrethe Vestager, the European Union Antitrust Chief, is busy touting that the EU's influence gives it the opportunity and power to shape the world. She insists the EU is ready to take on companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon which she contends has used their power to undermine competition, keep out innovation and collect data on us. This has given these companies great power to manipulate society. Google did this when it used the power of its search engine to favor its own comparison shopping service. While the EU has signaled it is going to make several big companies use their power in a way that’s fair and doesn’t discriminate the fact is this is easier to say than do.
The EU plans to do this by flexing its muscle with a combination of competition policy and regulation changes, however, whether it will be successful remains to be seen. Like many people, I remain dubious. These powerful companies already are overly involved with shaping the message of media and government propaganda are about to unleash upon society a great deal more computer-generated models and images. These have advanced to where they blur reality and diminish the need for humans to act as spokespeople or to represent organizations.
Back in 2011, Swedish fashion chain H&M admitted to using computer-generated models to showcase collections on its website. Since that time the ability to create computer-generated images has only gotten better. We have advanced to where it is difficult, no, it would be more accurate to say impossible to know if what you are seeing is really a person or simply the image of one. Drilling down into this issue forces us to where creativity, marketing, and price-point intersect and that has huge implications for society going forward. We have reached the point where what we are asked to believe in a world of fake news and false flags is only limited by our imagination.
An example of this and somewhat harmless can be seen in the virtual models H&M has generated for use in ads. These images look completely human, but upon inspection, if you look closely, they might all have the same body shape and pose with a real model's head superimposed on the body where the skin tone has been digitally altered to match her complexion. This step which moves past "photoshopping" has created a bit of controversy. H&M has drawn criticism for creating a false reality and creating an unrealistic body image for women to live up to. The Swedish website Aftonbladet first noticed the uncanny similarities of the models. Hacan Andersson, a spokesman from H&M, confirmed the deception by saying:
"It's not a real body, it is completely virtual and made by the computer. We take pictures of the clothes on a doll that stands in the shop, and then create the human appearance with a program on a computer."
Andersson argued the company made the choice to use the images of computer-generated models because it simplified the process of the photoshoot and also that it allowed customers to focus on the clothes rather than the models. He acknowledged, "The result is strange to look at, but the message is clear: buy our clothes, not our models."
The issue here is that the distinction between illusion/the false, and reality/truth will disappear in the manipulated virtual world that the elites are creating. This will be used to manipulate the already easily fooled sheeple, so that resistance becomes impossible, as in all of those Hollywood dystopia sci fi movies, but with no plot armour.