AI and CGI will transform information warfare, boost hoaxes, and escalate revenge porn

Hoaxes and trickery are almost as old as human history. When the Roman Republic first conquered the Italian peninsula between 500-200 BC, it was known to send fake refugees into enemy cities to "[subvert] the enemy from within." "Pope Joan" was believed to be a woman who allegedly tricked her way into become pope in the Middle Ages by pretending to be a man -- but the entire story is now viewed as fake, a fictional yarn spun centuries after her purported reign. "Vortigern and Rowena," a play that debuted in 1798, was initially touted as a lost work of William Shakespeare -- but was in fact a forgery created by William Henry Ireland. And in the 1980s, the Soviet Union attempted to damage the United States' reputation and sow discord among its allies by spreading the myth that American scientists had created AIDS in a military laboratory, in an "active measures" disinformation campaign called "Operation INFEKTION."