Empathy in an Age of Deepfakes

Abstract

What is the potential of empathy in helping us see through and beyond deepfakes? Deepfakes are synthetic media that depict individuals acting in falsified circumstances. With growing concern about the propagandistic uses of deepfakes, researchers are actively working on countermeasures to detect synthetic media. This paper examines whether empathy can play a role in differentiating deepfakes from genuine media. After exegeting the phenomenological interpretation of empathy in the works of Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein, the paper explores whether empathy could play a gnoseological role in an interdisciplinary campaign against deepfakes.