The future of fake news is horrifying

Radiolab's latest episode is about the future of fake news, and it's not pretty.

From Adobe's new VoCo audio editor to some of the latest software in facial manipulation, it adds up to a possible nightmare scenario where no one believes anything anymore. That, and a video of Obama that never really happened, as seen above.

Here's the Voco software—think Photoshop, but for audio—being used to make director Jordan Peele say things he never said:

And here are other examples—using George W. and Trump—that show how presidents can be made into puppets with the right software and a webcam.

The Radiolab piece was inspired by Nick Bilton, who laid out some frightening scenarios we can expect back in January's Vanity Fair.

What’s even scarier, actually, is where these technologies and ossified worldviews will be by the 2018 midterm election, or the presidential election in 2020. At that point, one suspects, there will not only be thousands of fake-news articles floating around the Internet, but also countless fake videos and fake audio clips, too. If you combine those technologies with a president who is known to lie about even the most trifling matters, we won’t know what is real and what is fake any longer.

The videos above may look rough, but imagine how good they'll look in 10 years? Scary stuff.