You don’t need advanced technology to dupe people online. We showed over 3,000 high schoolers a grainy video of poll workers dumping ballots to rig an election. A slapped-on caption, blaring in red font and caps lock, was enough to hoodwink students into believing U.S. voter fraud—even though the footage was from Russia. Only three students figured that out.

We’ve long warned that cheap fakes were more dangerous than deepfakes: nearly as effective but far easier to make. This past election, even with AI tools available to the masses, it was old-school videos spliced with digital duct tape that fueled debates about President Joe Biden’s fitness to serve.

Now, the era of cheap fakes is ending. Viral deep fakes made with new video tools mark an even more treacherous informational

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