REALITY CHECK

WORDS: Chris Nyst -nystlegal.com.au/blog PHOTOGRAPHY Created by @freepik.com

When ‘seeing is believing’ collides with deep-fake technology, can we still trust our own eyes.

Seeing is believing. We all know it to be true. No matter how bizarre, unexpected or unlikely it might be, once we see something for ourselves, with our own two eyes, unfolding in real time right there in front of us, even if it goes right against the grain of everything we’ve ever thought was possible, we’re forced to believe it.

Why? Because seeing is believing.

Think about Thomas, one of the original twelve apostles of Jesus Christ. By all accounts, he was clearly an extraordinary guy. Some say he was the brother, perhaps even the twin, of Jesus himself. According to ancient Syriac texts, Thomas carried the good news of the Gospel as far afield as Türkiye, Ethiopia, India and even China, at a time when you could wear out a perfectly good pair of sandals just trying to get as far as the next water-hole. The indigenous Guarani tribes of Paraguay even claim Thomas made it all the way to the New World, fourteen hundred years before Columbus set sail, preaching to natives in the wilds of South America.  The first Spanish ruler of Paraguay hadn’t seen it for himself, so of course he didn’t believe one word of it. So he sent his best experts out into the jungle to inspect sacred stone inscriptions said to have been carved by Thomas the Apostle. They found Hebrew-like symbols they couldn’t decipher, or even work out the age of.

So, the local legend of St. Thomas wasn’t necessarily believed by all. But I guess Thomas had it coming. Because, if you remember back to your old Sunday School stories, Thomas himself wasn’t all that big on believing stuff he hadn’t seen.

According to the Gospel of St John, when Jesus appeared alive and well to the other eleven apostles following his resurrection from the dead, Thomas had slept in or something and missed the whole show. So, when the others told him all about it later, he was sceptical to say the least. In fact, according to John’s Gospel he was absolutely intransigent, pig-headedly declaring “Unless I see the nail-marks in his hands, and put my fingers into the wound in his side, I will not believe.”

Well, we all know how that turned out for him. But let’s face it, every one of us who ever heard that story as a kid was secretly thinking to themselves, deep-down inside, “You know what, Tom, I get it. Seeing is believing”.

And it is.

For lawyers, nothing has more starkly underscored the point than the widespread proliferation, over recent years, of the use of closed-circuit television cameras. In the world of criminal prosecution, footage from CCTV cameras strategically positioned on street corners and in public spaces, and from body-worn video-recording equipment carried by police officers and other first responders, has become an increasingly essential feature of the proof of criminal charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

And it doesn’t all flow one way. In a world where seeing is believing, video evidence can exonerate as well as implicate.

Some years ago, I acted for a high-profile sporting identity charged with assaulting police and resisting arrest outside a popular nightspot. The detailed account of three separate detectives claimed he had drunkenly attempted to force his way into the nightclub and then, when approached by police, physically attacked them without cause or provocation. My client denied the charges, but the sworn evidence of the three officers shaped up as sufficient to convince a magistrate otherwise. A conviction, or even the controversy of a public court appearance on such charges, was certain to seriously damage my client’s reputation and career prospects.

Fortunately, before the matter actually came to court, I got my hands on the night club’s CCTV footage, and it told a very different story. I immediately took it to the chief prosecutor, and pointed out to him that if the police persisted with their story, the footage could raise serious questions of perjury, and might even sound in civil damages. The officer concerned wisely and very promptly withdrew the charges before the matter even came to court. Seeing is believing.

But that was then, and this is now.

The other day, someone showed me a film clip, depicting a handful of SWAT-type police expertly storming a grimy, run down drug den then systematically eliminating a bunch of heavily-armed baddies in a spectacular eruption of exploding stun grenades, stuttering machine gun bursts, and cascading cartridge shells, complete with intense and compelling dialogue, ultra-realistic sound effects and a fully integrated background musical score. I couldn’t help but marvel at the high-end production values. The polished performance of the players, masterful camera-work, expert direction and flawless quick-fire action choreography, were nothing short of astonishing.  Imagine my surprise, then, when I learned the whole scene was entirely AI-generated, from start to finish. It was all a computer creation dreamt up by Google Veo 3, the brand new AI video tool that can turn a one-sentence keyboard prompt into spectacular movie magic, at next to no cost and all in a matter of minutes.

When I went looking online for more evidence of this game-changing stunt, the first thing I saw was a giraffe riding a motorbike the wrong way down a busy street in New York. Pretty funny, I had to admit. But when the next clip came up – a procession of bogus TV bulletins by totally real-looking reporters, breaking news of chaotic disasters all around the world, complete with convincing on-the-scene footage to prove it – it gave me real pause for thought.

In a time when whole generations slavishly consume all of their news online, the potential for misinformation, and perhaps even mischief and mayhem, was suddenly too close for comfort.

AI is fast changing everything in this brave new world. Maybe soon, if we’re not very careful, even the meaning of reality itself.

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