Something that They Never Said: Multimodal Disinformation and Source Vividness in Understanding the Power of AI-Enabled Deepfake News

ABSTRACT While deepfake has emerged as a severe issue in the multimedia environment, most studies examined text-based false claims, leaving the question of what unique features of video-based deepfake news deceives recipients and how it can be corrected. By conducting two online experiments, we study perceived source vividness as a psychological mechanism of the effect of AI-enabled deepfake news on news credibility and engagement intentions. Furthermore, we test how an inserted false-tag onto the fake news can reduce the impact of source vividness experienced by seeing multimodal disinformation on news credibility and engagement intentions. The results suggest that participants who saw deepfake news had higher source vividness than those who saw fake news with other modalities (i.e., text-only and text-photo), and such source vividness increased credibility and engagement intentions of fake news. The false-tag successfully reduced engagement intentions of deepfake news for those who perceived a high vividness of the superimposed interviewee.