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“I would think so. But I’m not an expert in computer-generated videos.” He pauses for a moment. “Maybe you should talk to the people from AlmostReal.”
“AlmostReal?”
“That’s a start-up. Based in Berlin. They’ve been involved in AI-assisted filmmaking for a while. Was bought up by Google a good year ago. I recently read something about them in the news. I’ll send you a link.”
“All right. I’ll talk to them. Thanks!”
Yasira is about to leave, but of course Cyber-Chris has another fun fact up his sleeve.
“Did you know that we also generate images at the BKA?”
“Oh really?”
“Child pornography.”
“What?”
“In order to detect paedocriminal offenses, we’ve been allowed to produce fake child pornography since 2020.”
“I assume it’s about being able to infiltrate closed networks,” Yasira suspects.
“Yes, uploading your own material is often a condition for access. It’s a way of proving that you’re not working for the police. But we can fake this stuff now.”
Cyber-Chris seems proud of this. Yasira doesn’t know how to react. It’s such a surreal world she’s stumbled into. She says goodbye to Baumann.
She is on to something big. An evil that will shake the world. But she still has no proof. She couldn’t even convince Michael. How is she supposed to get the boss on board?
The BKA forges child porn, she thinks on the way back to her office. Strange. Yasira thinks back to the website that promises to remove the clothes from any photo. And then something occurs to her. Something that irritated her. Something that she immediately forgot in all the stress. How could she have lost track of it? Is that the evidence she is looking for? In any case, it will be her trump card for the team meeting. She calls Frank Palmer.
PIONEERING WORK
Yasira has put together a PowerPoint presentation. Something she hasn’t had to do since, well, since she helped Zara with a school presentation. It actually hasn’t been that long.
It’s not just the Magnificent Seven who are gathered in the meeting room. Yasira has also invited the boss to join them. Everyone stares at the big screen.
“You recognize these pictures, don’t you?” Yasira asks. She clicks through three pictures and names what’s in them. “The Pope in a white down coat. Trump being arrested by the FBI. Putin kneeling before Xi Jinping. What do these photos have in common?”
Yasira looks around. How ridiculous. She just asked a question to which she knows the answer. As if she was really giving a school lecture and wanted her classmates to get involved. Of course, no one is willing to answer.
“Exactly. They’re all fake.” Yasira clicks on. The website of Mila, the virtual influencer that Zara follows, opens up. “But you might not have seen anything like this before. At least it was new to me.”
The website automatically plays videos. You can see Mila looking lasciviously at a photo shoot, playing a tag game and having a chat with friends. You can see her on a soccer field, on a stage, in an art gallery.
Yasira shakes her head. She doesn’t want to believe what she’s about to say. It looks so real.
“This girl here doesn’t exist. And I can’t stress this enough. I don’t mean that an actress is pretending to be this so-called Mila. This isn’t even film footage in the traditional sense. These are all computer-generated images.”
Mila doesn’t miss her mark. Most of her team, like Yasira, don’t seem to have known how advanced the technology is.
She clicks further. The Lena video is now playing. Everyone here had to watch it so many times that it’s lost most of its horror. It’s just Exhibit A now.
“Who says we’re not dealing with a fake in this video as well?”
Chairs are shuffled. Heads are scratched.
“I understand your doubts,” Yasira continues. “I’m skeptical too. I’m not saying the video is definitely fake. I’m just saying it could be fake. All the hate, the street battles, the polarization. They wouldn’t be a side effect of the video, but exactly what was intended with its release.”
She gives her colleagues a moment to familiarize themselves with this outrageous suspicion. The boss also seems to need a moment to wrap his brain around this theory. You can read his thought processes one-to-one in his facial expressions.
