By Professor Mark Engelman, Barrister, 4-5 Gray's Inn Square
One of the world’s all-time impostors was Arthur Orton, aka Thomas Castro. He was a butcher from Wagga Wagga, Australia and having seen the Dowager Lady Tichborne’s newspaper article requesting news of her son who had left Great Britain in 1823 assail The Bella, which had floundered and was presumed lost responded by claiming to be her estranged son. He successfully deceived her into believing he was her heir and received £1,000 by way of annuity.
History repeats itself. In fact, according to Wikipedia, photographic manipulation was first developed in the 19th century in the production of the now quaintly termed “motion picture” industry. Today AI has given us the portmanteaux word “deepfake’ which combines the words “deep learni...