Author: Aaron Painter
ISBN No:
Review date: 27/09/2026
No of pages: 278
Publisher:
Year of publication: 01/09/2026
Brief:
Deepfaked: Restoring Trust in the AI Era
When identity unravels, fundamentals of what it means to be human, such as trust and security, also become fragile. That’s the message from Aaron Winter in his book on deepfakes. Put another way, this book and the subject may be technical yet are not simply about technology. Rather, Winter ponders how fragile trust has become in our digital age’ย and how vulnerable we are to the copying or manipulation of our identities.
AI deepfakes completely alter the equation, as he sets out. Deepfakes ‘enable bad actors to imitate our loved ones, our employees, our clients, and other key figures in our lives with terrifying accuracy. They put us in the frustrating position of no longer being certain that we can trust the evidence of our eyes and ears’, and what’s more, we have to make judgements, or in the author’s phrase turn on our ‘bullshit detector’,ย in real time.
As the author relates, deepfakes matter to us all, if friends or family are scammed, including if a deepfake tricks them into believing we (urgently) need their (financial) help. Winter writes also for the enterprise; can you, he asks, really be confident that your systems are safe from AI-powered fraud? He goes through several high-profile incidents, many ‘at high-profile organizations with cutting-edge security protocols and which nonetheless found themselves vulnerable’.
Hopeful
While (as Winter writes) itโs easy to read dire warnings about deepfakes, he says that he’s hopeful; ‘history tells us that every time fraudsters innovate, society innovates back. Counterfeit coins gave us minting marks, forged documents gave us notaries, and robocalls gave us spam filters. On every occasion, proof won out.” What’s different, as he adds,ย is ‘both the speed and the scale of the challenge’. He concludes: “Proof of humanity is not someone elseโs problem; itโs everyoneโs problem. The technology is only going to improve; the question is whether we will improve with it.”
About the author
Aaron Painter, ‘a devout technologist’,ย CEO of Nametag,ย is a former Microsoft executive.
