Trust No One: Inside the World of Deepfakes by Michael Grothaus review – disinformation’s superweapon

Deepfakes are the latest moral danger from the fast-moving world of tech. But haven't we seen it all before?

On the night of Thursday 3 September 1998, a middle-aged community college professor with a history of heart attacks passed out at the wheel of his car on a busy US highway. The car drifted across the lanes and into the rush of oncoming traffic. The collision was so powerful it thrust the engine of the professor's car into the front seats. Miraculously, he survived, and no one else was seriously injured. He recovered from a broken ankle and wrist and left hospital. A month later, he was back there with a pain in his leg - a clot that might or might not have been triggered by the accident. Next, his body swelled up to twice its size with fluid, so he looked like a balloon you could prick with a needle and burst. His wife and young children watched as his miraculous survival turned to a sudden worsening of his underlying heart disease. By April 1999 he was dead.

Just over two decades later his son, Michael Grothaus, sat at his computer watching a video of his father, healthy and wearing a yellow T-shirt, playing with a smartphone that was invented many years after his death. He was enjoying himself, recording the sun-dappled park around him. Then he turned towards the screen and smiled benignly at his son from behind his unmistakeable bushy eyebrows.