Comment by the_af

I agree photo manipulation has always happened, to various degrees of perfection, since the dawn of photography.

I suppose the real difference is that before it took a more artisanal, time-consuming process, and now -- increasingly -- it takes far less time to create something convincing enough. Same with video: you could fake a video, do editing, etc, but it took time, skill, a location where to shoot, etc. Now it's becoming easier to do for everyone. And it's not perfect yet, but are we sure it won't get there? And it doesn't have to be perfect anyway, it just has to fool most people in a given window of time.