Deepfake as a social-technical artifact: A sociological analysis

Deepfakes as digital artifacts created with deep machine learning have already become a common phenomenon with multiple forms, but social consequences of this technology are still controversial. The authors conducted a sociological analysis based on the social construction of technology theory (SCOT) and cultural sociology to identify three intertwined levels of the deepfake as an artifact: (a) technical - based on generative neural networks capable of creating highly realistic content and providing artificial intelligence (AI) with features of a perfect mimetic object, thus, overcome barriers of social recognition; (b) media - mechanisms of pragmatic impact, including creolization, intertextuality and metanarrativity; (c) social - functions and dysfunctions of deepfakes and also social domains that change under their influence. The social significance of deepfakes is ambivalent: on the one hand, this technology is highly risky, produces significant threats to privacy, cybersecurity, and social stability; on the other hand, it provides previously unseen opportunities for development in the fields of art, education, healthcare and business. This approach allows to overcome the limitations of the dominant alarmist discourse that reduces deepfakes to tools of disinformation and fraud, thus revealing the social construction of technical artifacts. Despite the obvious discursive stigmatization in the very portmanteau “deepfake”, it is important to see the satirical potential of such media as a tool for maintaining democratic culture. In the mixed communication perspective, deepfakes ensure visible prosopopean transmobility of AI, creating new forms of social agency through the mechanisms of social mimesis. The most technically advanced deepfakes generate virtual personas capable of effective mimetic communication beyond the “uncanny valley”. Their quasi-human subjectivity is recognized as normal and credible, since the conditions for constructing a significant Other are mimetic: mimicry (of human visceral features); imitation (of social actions); emulation (of meaningfulness and empathy). As with other innovative technologies, the key to controlling deepfakes is not its prohibition but a deep understanding of its social construction together with reasonable modes of its management in the interests of the public good.