"what makes a deepfake in the first place?"

"the question raises a number of interesting issues: not only our difficulty in defining deepfakes, but the problems that could arise if the term is applied vaguely in the future. Could “deepfake” become the next “fake news,” for example; a phrase that once described a distinct phenomenon (people publishing fabricated news stories on social media for profit), but that has now been co-opted to discredit legitimate reporting.”

The digital manipulation of video may make the current era of “fake news” seem quaint.