Zuckerberg's fake beard

Hi everyone. An oddly flattering fake image of Mark Zuckerberg is the latest reminder of the power of deepfakes, even when people know they’ [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( [by Ellen Huet]( Hi everyone. An oddly flattering fake image of Mark Zuckerberg is the latest reminder of the power of deepfakes, even when people know they’re not real. But first... Three things you need to know today: • China is writing a UN resolution intended to [advance artificial intelligence]( • Elon Musk’s xAI is closing in on [a $6 billion fundraising round]( • Atlassian co-founder and Co-CEO [Mike Farquhar is leaving his executive post]( Shaping perceptions Last week, [Mark Zuckerberg](bbg://people/profile/15103277) posted a video of himself discussing Meta’s latest AI model. Mike Rundle, an app designer based in North Carolina, was watching the video and was struck by Zuckerberg’s new look: slightly longer hair and a chain necklace. And he thought the Meta chief executive officer would look “cooler with a beard,” he said. So, on a whim, Rundle pulled a still from the video and passed it through a “beard” filter on photo tool app FaceApp, then [tossed]( the image on X, formerly Twitter. Bearded Zuck went quasi-viral. The chorus of internet commenters was saying something they rarely, if ever, have said about the CEO: He looked … hot? “Beard is truly a man’s makeup,” one [said](. “He looks like he has a pulse now,” another added. Even though many people knew the image was fake, it had a real, lingering effect on the way people thought about Zuckerberg. Less robotic, more alive. They joked about how Zuckerberg should grow out his beard, and Zuck played along, posting about possibly setting aside his razor for a while. It’s a light-hearted example of a serious issue: how deepfakes can alter our perceptions of public figures, even when people know they’re fake. That effect has [harsh consequences in much-more-common damaging deepfakes](, like fake AI pornographic images of Taylor Swift that spread online earlier this year. Read More: [Understanding Deepfakes and the Taylor Swift Images](bbg://news/stories/S8140QT0AFB4) Fake images can blur our sense of reality. People thought the beard made Zuckerberg glow up, but the face filter also widened his jaw, tinted his eyebrows, gave him a bronzed tan and lightened his teeth. “When people are fooled by an image, they don’t even necessarily know how they’re being fooled,” said [Mar Hicks](, an associate professor of data science at the University of Virginia. And in the case of someone as influential and as criticized as Zuckerberg, Hicks said, “any goodwill that he can get by altering his appearance, whether in real life or through Photoshop,” carries important ramifications. AI tools to create altered images and videos are getting more prevalent and more powerful. Though we’re familiar with manipulated images, the biggest upheavals come not from new technology but from the “speeding up or scaling up” of their effects, Hicks said. That means a future with more bearded Zucks, [more Popes wearing puffy jackets](, and more horrific uses of deepfake technology, pornographic or otherwise. The amusement over a CEO with a beard shouldn’t distract us from mitigating the harms that this tech can bring about. “It’s all fun and games for certain people and then there are really serious dangers and consequences for other groups of people,” Hicks said. —[Ellen Huet](mailto:ehuet4@bloomberg.net) Bloomberg Tech conference Hi, Tom Giles here, hijacking part of today's newsletter to hype our flagship Bloomberg Tech event, coming up May 9 in San Francisco. We've got a stellar lineup that includes Anthropic co-founders Dario and Daniela Amodei, Xbox President Sarah Bond, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and Adam Neumann, the former CEO of WeWork, to tell us about his new real estate company, Flow. I'm especially excited to get the chance to interview Meta Chief Product Officer Chis Cox, Arm CEO Rene Haas and Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. [Learn More](. The big story A busy day for big tech earnings with [Alphabet]( and [Microsoft]( producing [positive results](bbg://news/stories/SCIUE1T0AFB4)on strong cloud sales. [Snap also found favor]( with investors as its digital ad changes reached a wider audience of marketers, while[Intel fell short](of expectations, suggesting the chipmaker is still struggling to return to prominence. One to watch [Watch Rubrik Chief Executive Officer Bipul Sinha interviewed on Bloomberg Television about the company’s initial public offering.]( Get fully charged Microsoft-backed Rubrik jumped 16% i[n its first day of trading as a public company](. Notion’s enterprise software has caught on with consumers who are using it for [everything from wedding planning to family budgets](. The US Federal Communications Commission revived net neutrality to [establish its authority over the internet](. 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