Jack Dorsey Says It Will Soon Be 'Impossible to Tell' if Deepfakes Are Real: 'Like You're in a Simulation' Dorsey said we will "not know what is real and what is fake" in the next five to 10 years.

By Sherin Shibu Edited by Melissa Malamut

Key Takeaways

  • Jack Dorsey gave a talk yesterday at the Festival of the Sun on tech and freedom.
  • Dorsey said "you will not know what is real and what is fake" in the next five to 10 years because of the proliferation of fake images and videos out there.

Jack Dorsey, the billionaire co-founder of Twitter, now X, predicts that within the next decade, it'll be harder than ever to tell the difference between what's real and what's fake — and he has a key tip for how to deal with a reality that feels like a simulation.

On Sunday, Dorsey spoke about tech and freedom at the Festival of the Sun, a music celebration in Tuscany, Italy.

Towards the end of his presentation, Dorsey said we "will not know what is real and what is fake" in the next five to 10 years because of the proliferation of fake images and videos, or deepfakes, out there.

"It will be almost impossible to tell," he said. "It will feel like you're in a simulation."

X owner Elon Musk commented on a clip of Dorsey's presentation with the question, "How do we know we aren't already there?"

Dorsey's tip was not to trust anything — not even what he was saying — and to experience and verify everything yourself.

Related: Jack Dorsey Says Corporate AI Has Surpassed Twitter, X

Jack Dorsey. Photographer: Cole Burston/Bloomberg via Getty Images

"The only truth you have is what you can verify yourself, with your experience," Dorsey said.

He reiterated what he said in a clip publicized on X earlier this month, that the free speech debate is really about free will, which could be shaped by corporate interests that control the content people see on their newsfeeds.

According to Dorsey, anyone who interacts with technology should be more mindful of their digital footprint.

Related: Jack Dorsey Says Social Media Has an Algorithm Problem, and Elon Musk Agrees: 'We Are Being Programmed'

Dorsey also called for more open-source AI models, or AI that is less of a black box with more transparent mechanisms — like how it works and what it has been trained on.

Making AI open-source is something that Musk has been in support of as well. In March, Musk's startup xAI open-sourced the AI model behind its flagship AI chatbot Grok.

Sherin Shibu

Entrepreneur Staff

News Reporter

Sherin Shibu is a business news reporter at Entrepreneur.com. She previously worked for PCMag, Business Insider, The Messenger, and ZDNET as a reporter and copyeditor. Her areas of coverage encompass tech, business, strategy, finance, and even space. She is a Columbia University graduate.

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