The Netflix AI Sex Series Being Called Cruel And Outrageous
Over the years, reality TV has proven to be entertaining – if handled the right way – and devastating if not. Recently being called to the headlines for the treatment of contestants for their reality competition series Love Is Blind, Deep Fake Love is now the Netflix title facing scrutiny for how it treats its participants. Using deep fake technology to essentially fool one member of a relationship into believing that the other is cheating on them and, according to The Telegraph, the show is a clear-cut example of how artificial intelligence may be an even bigger threat to our mental and emotional states than previously thought.
In Deep Fake Love, a show made for Netflix by the Spanish company Cuarzo Producciones, five couples sign up for the experience of a lifetime to test their relationships. Separated into two different houses, a batch of sexy singles waits to tempt the uncertain parties into a new romantic situationship.
While it’s too soon to see much of what the mental and emotional fallout faced by contestants of Deep Fake Love will be, according to three of the four winning couples’ social media pages, it would appear that the experiment did more hurt than help for their relationship.
At the other house, the other member of the partnership is shown recordings of their significant other engaging physically with someone else and they’re forced to decide whether it’s a real interaction or one created with AI.
This obviously poses a handful of concerns for those who have agreed to take part in Deep Fake Love as the mental and emotional implications of what this could mean for those on the Netflix series are rather serious. It’s painful enough to watch someone you love fall for another person, but when that is exacerbated by the push-pull dynamic of being unsure if what you’re watching is real or not, things are only made that much worse.
Netflix’s Deep Fake Love is under fire for using artificial intelligence to make contestants believe their significant others are cheating on them.
While it’s too soon to see much of what the mental and emotional fallout faced by contestants of Deep Fake Love will be, according to three of the four winning couples’ social media pages, it would appear that the experiment did more hurt than help for their relationship.
As if telling the difference between the truth and lies wasn’t hard enough, those signing up for the show have also — knowingly or not — added their names to a growing debate surrounding the use of artificial intelligence in the film industry. Deep Fake Love isn’t the only Netflix show to recently make headlines because of artificial intelligence.
The Actors’ And Writers’ Strike
The ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike has called into question how studios plan to conduct future business with live talent as opposed to swapping in AI technology for both writing and acting jobs. Both unions have been adamant about holding strong to their commitment to ensure that AI is part of the talks when negotiations kick back up.
Outside of the artificial intelligence and moral dynamics facing Deep Fake Love, Netflix and other studios like it that may decide to move forward with similar premises for dating shows, will need to be wary of how they ensure that the mental and emotional health of their contestants is taken seriously.
In the past, similar reality shows like Love Island have had their fair share of suicides directly related to how a contestant was portrayed on the screen. With AI becoming such a big name in the game, the stakes for 15 minutes of fame are higher than ever.
