CONCEPT
Synthetic Media and Deepfakes
AI-generated text, audio, image, and video indistinguishable from authentic content — the technology that weaponized Gore's own likeness against his climate work in 2024.
Synthetic media names the class of AI-generated content — text, audio, image, video — that is functionally indistinguishable from human-produced content using the sensory and analytical tools available to ordinary consumers. Deepfakes are the video and audio subset, typically involving synthesized representations of specific identified individuals. The technology matured between 2022 and 2025 from a research curiosity to a deployed capability accessible to any user with a laptop, and it has become the most visible manifestation of the information ecosystem crisis that Gore's framework diagnoses. Gore's direct experience as a deepfake target makes the entry unusually personal for a political figure of his stature.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The 2024 documentary The Climate According to AI Al Gore created a synthetic version of Gore, scripted with dialogue its creator claimed represented what an honest Al Gore might say, and deployed that synthetic Gore to undermine the climate message the real Gore had spent his career advancing. The man who warned about artificial