Creepy truth of Black Mirror episode Joan is Awful

Deep fakes, phone surveillance and streaming services that own the rights to your life story - Black Mirror is back. And tech experts say it’s not too far from reality.

Deep fakes, phone surveillance and streaming services that own the rights to your life story - Black Mirror is back. And tech experts say it’s not too far from reality. Picture: Netflix

** WARNING: Spoilers **

Hit Netflix series Black Mirror has dropped its sixth season after a four-year hiatus, bringing its signature dystopian predictions for technology and society.

Episode one, Joan is Awful, tells the story of an average woman, Joan, who discovers her life is being monitored through phone surveillance and made into a TV show in almost real-time, with her character played by an artificial intelligence deep fake of Salma Hayek, who sold her likeness to the streaming company.

Joan - played by Annie Murphy - finds out that she’s being monitored. Picture: Netflix

It may sound like a far-fetched romp, but computer science expert Dr Sebastian Sequoiah-Grayson said much of the technology was already here.

“Various intelligence agencies, as well as private actors in the same space, are able to activate people’s cameras and microphones on their phones at will remotely, as well as acquire the contents,” he said.

“An Israeli security company is selling software that does these things to various despotic leaders around the world for the right price.

“Is the technology widely available to the general public? No, it’s not. But is it available to hundreds of thousands of people around the world? Absolutely it is.”

There is also no question of the existence of deep fake technology, in which a video is digitally altered so it appears to show someone doing or saying something that was never done or said.While deep fakes are not yet as easy to produce as AI-generated artworks and school assignments, there are already plenty of examples of tech-savvy people creating deep fake celebrities – from Tom Cruise to Joe Biden.

Dr Sequoiah-Grayson, who is a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales, said it was also already possible to produce convincing three-dimentional environments closely replicating reality.

Things go downhill quickly. Picture: Netflix

Salma Hayek stars in the latest season of Black Mirror. Picture: Netflix

However, the cost of doing that in almost real time – as depicted in Black Mirror – would be prohibitive.

“You need a very, very large amount of computing power behind you to move pixels around in three dimensions,” he said.

“If it was an entire city scape and everything was generated 3D with CGI (computer generated imagery), it is certainly very possible in principal but in practice it’s not doable in real time just yet.

“But that’s a bottleneck in processing power not know-how.”

The only other potential barrier stopping Joan is Awful becoming a reality in the near future is legal.

In the Black Mirror episode, Joan is told she has no legal recourse against the streaming service basing a series off her life as she agreed to this in the fine print of the terms and conditions when she signed up to her subscription.

Although not a lawyer, Dr Sequoiah-Grayson has a background in IT ethics and said the “reasonable person” defence would likely come into play as no reasonable person would consent to this use of their information.

“There are laws surrounding just what types of things consenting adults can give permission to any third party to carry out,” he said.

He gave the example of the German cannibal who in 2001 gained videorecorded consent from his victim before murdering and eating him.

Despite his victim volunteering, Armin Meiwes received a life sentence.

“(That case) raised lots of interesting legal questions and similar responses will arise in courts of law around the world as various technologies enable behaviours and acts we never thought to either prohibit or license,” Dr Sequoiah-Grayson said.

“The legal system has never really had to consider something like somebody signing away the likeness of their identity in such a way they can be deep faked convincingly with private moments shown to the world. Maybe now we should start thinking about it.”