Blur between Virtual and Physical Reality

Synthetic media is developing apace, and in tandem with the rise of virtual and augmented reality, it will cause us to evaluate what we consider to be ‘real’ when videos, voice, text and data can all be so easily manipulated. (WGSN)

Virtual and physical realities will increasingly be on equal footing, and the line between the two will blur.

Deepfake formats are rising fast: there were more than 85,000 deepfake videos circulating online in 2020, up from 15,000 in 2019, and Avatarify, a DIY deepfake app, had more than 6m downloads between February and the end of March 2021. Synthetic media is expanding beyond video to include text, voice and data, and it is finding applications in enterprise (training videos, dubbed pitches) as well as entertainment.