Era of Manufactured Truth: AI-Edited Video, Investment Fraud, and the Weaponization of Public Trust
Earlier this week, a friend forwarded me a video and asked, with very little doubt in his voice, whether he should send five hundred thousand naira to the account printed beneath it. The clip appeared to show Aliko Dangote, fresh from a meeting with the President, announcing that members of the public could now purchase shares in the Dangote refinery for that amount and expect a return of four million naira to fourteen million naira within three months. The Punch banner sat neatly across the lower third of the screen. The lip movements matched the audio. The voice was unmistakably his. Twenty people my friend knew had supposedly already paid, including two relatives and a clergyman whose endorsement, in our context, carried more persuasive weight than any formal prospectus could. He did not entirely want me to talk him out of it. What he wanted was for me to confirm what he believed he was already seeing. The trouble is that what he was seeing was both real and not real, and the...
