Deepfake and fake news are making the headlines, yet through history we have many examples of technology being used to trick and manipulate people. We made a best of of the most memorable times we were tricked!

1. CAESARANDHISCOMMENTS
Sources : Les sorciers du verbe : petite histoire de la manipulation, Jean-Christophe Plot - blog.francetvinfo.fr
La retouche photo avant Photoshop - phenixphotos.fr • Ce qu’il faut savoir sur Cambridge Analytica (...) - lemonde.fr
Linkedin : Un espion créé un faux profil grâce à l’I.A. - lebigdata.fr • L’ère des fake Folks - iatranshumanisme.com
Saviez-vous que “La Guerre des mondes”qui affole l’Amérique en 1938, c'est un mythe ? - telerama.fr
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"Far from being an alienation, technique is a revelation of who we are,
beyond dreams and mystifications.” Looking at history, and our use of technology,
we can only agree with Maurizio Ferraris. A selection.
Until then, oral communication was the main way of persuading people.
Caesar, with his Commentary on the Gallic War, demonstrated that writing
techniques could be formidable. It's the only literary source available on this
war, it is far from being a lie, but Caesar exaggerated its merits and positioned
himself as a military genius.
57-51BC.
LINCOLNFROMHEADTOTOE?
Photo editing has its heyday with Photoshop, but the first editing was done in
1841. The most famous of this period is the portrait of Lincoln in 1860. On this
one, Lincoln's head was placed above the body of a South Carolina politician
named John Calhoun.
1860
LIVEALIENATTACK
On October 30, 1938, on CBS News radio in the United States, Orson Welles
recounted a live invasion of Martians. Based on the novel "The War of the
Worlds", Welles' story is a science-fiction story. The next day, the written press
reported a wave of panic and many suicides... which are in fact only legends.
The print media simply wanted to challenge the radio station, as the latter
had more success and made press houses loose substantial publicity revenues.
1938
COLDWARANDPROPAGANDAWAR
Before the Cold War, propaganda had already proved its worth, such as Soviet
posters and the Nazi ministry led by Goebbels. What differentiates the Cold
War from previous propaganda is the global and abusive use of new mass
information technologies, including the cinema, television and radio.
1947-1991
FISHINGFORINFORMATION
Phishing is a method used online since the 1990s to commit identity theft.
The technique consists in making the victim believe that he or she is speaking
to a trusted third party - bank, administration, etc. - in order to extract
personal information from them. They often send fake emails inviting you to
go to a (fake) website similar to the trusted third party.
1996
HANDSONTHEHEARTS
In 2005, French humorist Gérald Dahan made a phone hoax by fooling
French football team coach Raymond Domenech and his captain, Zinedine
Zidane. By impersonating then President Jacques Chirac, he managed to get
Lilian Thuram to play in the first team, despite an injury, and he urged the
players to put their hands on their hearts during the national anthem.
2005
DARKPATTERN
In 2006, Facebook launched the era of the online attention economy based on
dark patterns. It is a practice of interface design considered unethical and
intended to obtain the desired action from the user. It uses cognitive biases to
mislead our reasoning to catch our attention.
2006
YESWECAN
In addition to a powerful image, Obama owes his election to the use of social
networks, emails and especially his data base. This is the first major election
using such a large data base. His teams profiled American citizens to know
when to contact them and what speech to develop.
2008
GOOGLEEMPLOYEEBYOMISSION
In 2009 Google bought reCAPTCHA whose technology allows to certify that a
user is not a robot. But quickly, Google uses this technology to train its
artificial intelligence. First to digitize its huge library and then to improve its
autonomous cars. So we were all employed by Google without knowing it.
2009
OBAMAORNOT?
"President Trump is a total and complete d*****." That would be what Barack
Obama said in a video broadcast by the news website BuzzFeed. It is actually
a Deepfake created by filmmaker Jordan Peele using artificial intelligence.
This new technology enables the user to create videos that never existed.
2018
THEARTIFICIALSPY
WHATABOUTTHEFUTURE?
A certain Katie Jones, with an impressive resumé on LinkedIn, has managed to
connect with several American politicians. But the trick didn't hold up and
behind Katie Jones' profile was in fact a Russian spy. The new aspect is that
the profile photo is "original". Indeed, the spy used GAN artificial intelligence
technology to create a fake profile picture.
2019
IBMANDTHEPROJECTDEBATER
Harish Natarajan, debate contests’ champion, may have won against the robot
Project Debater, but the latter started at a low level and yet managed to
convince people in the assembly. This is indeed a robot capable of mastering
the complexity and richness of the human oral language. Could our future
politicians be robots with manipulative interests?
OPENAIANDGPT-2
GPT-2 is a text generator developed by Elon Musk's company OpenAI. This
artificial intelligence is able to write high quality texts with a very distinctive
style and structure. That's why this little robot is suspected to become a Fake
News creator. Even researchers are concerned about its potential use.
CAMBRIDGEANALYTICASCANDAL
Cambridge Analytica put Donald Trump and Facebook in trouble in 2016.
Donald Trump's campaign team paid the British company to use their
databases to, among other things, disseminate false information. In addition,
Cambridge Analytica used between 30 and 70 million Facebook user data
collected without their knowledge.
2016
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