Synthetic reality can generate worlds and stimulate innovative solutions

In the broadest sense of the word, artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines. We’re increasingly seeing it in everything from self-driving cars to facial recognition software to your smart refrigerator. Whether good or bad, AI is everywhere. According to many experts, this will trigger the next industrial revolution, changing the face of humanity and what we are capable of in our daily lives.

Synthetic reality is the next step in AI, where virtual or digital realities are generated using artificial intelligence. Vast amounts of data are collected and used to build new worlds and creations that can be used to augment reality. Synthetic reality is the synthetic version of the real world with all its atomic and quantum elements, behaviors and natural phenomena.

What synthetic reality can do

According to Anderson Rochahead of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Campinas in São Paulo, Brazil, and author of a recent preprint on the subject, synthetic reality is when you connect a story and narrative to synthetic media, so that all of reality is generated through A.I.

“Now you can create everything: the text, the images and the audio, all through AI,” says Rocha.

Synthetic reality uses AI to create a world that ‘obeys fundamental laws of nature’. AI, says synthetic reality expert Matte white“is capable of synthesizing humanly devised systems and social constructs” such as the economy, political systems, government functions, and even the basis of human culture.

What was once an immersive virtual reality world is now based on AI that goes beyond imitating data, but becomes it.

“We are not there yet, but we are moving in that direction,” says Rocha. “We can still find tell-tale stories about these counterfeits, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult.”

Read more: Can AI read your mind?

Synthetic media and the deepfake

The much-discussed disadvantage of synthetic media is that it can generate fake news, for example by making images and videos appear real when they are not.

The more real synthetic media becomes, the more likely we are to be imitated. According to a study published in SN Social SciencesSynthetic media can enable “manipulation and deception on a massive scale, which is a major concern in a world already permeated by fake news.”

For example, an AI-generated copy of a political figure can say or do something in a video that the real figure did not say or do.

Read more: Deepfakes: the murky origins of fake videos and their potential to wreak havoc online

The future of synthetic reality

But while synthetic reality is a world filled with what-if questions and the potential of deepfake, it also offers a lot of potential. It could open up a world of “innovative solutions” in the availability of education and training and healthcare.

“In contemporary society, synthetic realities have become crucial tools in education, healthcare, commerce and automation,” write the study authors of the recent preprint.

The research also states that in the coming decades, around 90 percent of online content could be synthetic rather than real, meaning it will all be generated using AI.

Whether we like it or not, the world of synthetic reality is here. We cannot know what it will bring, but we must be wary of the Deepfake because our senses may be trying to deceive us. What looks and sounds like a person or the world we know may actually be a figment of our AI imagination.

“These algorithms are constantly evolving, so spotting a fake algorithm is a cat-and-mouse game,” says Rocha.

Read more: AI and the human brain: how similar are they?

Article sources

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed research and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors check for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. View the sources used for this article below:

Sara Novak is a science journalist based in South Carolina. In addition to writing for Discover, her work appears in Scientific American, Popular Science, New Scientist, Sierra Magazine, Astronomy Magazine, and many more. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia’s Grady School of Journalism. She is also a candidate for a master’s degree in scientific writing from Johns Hopkins University (expected to graduate in 2023).