By Farooq Kperogi It seems our world is inexorably moving in the direction of replacing the authentic with the synthetic. Increasingly, the ...
By Farooq Kperogi
It seems our world is inexorably moving in the direction of replacing the authentic with the synthetic. Increasingly, the lines between the real and the imitation, the fake and the copy of the fake, are blurring to the point of unrecognition.
The Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL) phenomenon, now a global trend, exemplifies this shift: women across the world surgically sculpt their bodies into the exaggerated curves popularized by celebrity culture and digital aesthetics. Men, conditioned by these simulations, now instinctively do a double take. “Is that real?” has become the reflexive response to a sensationally curvaceous body.
At the same time, photos are routinely photoshopped, videos are filtered, and written texts are increasingly AI-generated or AI-enhanced.
People who couldn't string together a sentence in English that isn't a mockery of the language now write with Shakespearean eloquence, while those who have spent years honing their craft are suddenly suspected of relying on AI chatbots.
With the launch of Sora, even moving images can mimic reality with uncanny precision. Seeing is no longer believing. We now approach every image, video, and text with skepticism. We're unsure what is authentic and what is synthetic.
As I mulled over these developments, my mind went back to my doctoral adviser, Professor Michael Bruner, who introduced me to the insights of French theorist Jean Baudrillard (pronounced boh-dree-YAR) about how in modern society imitations have become self-referential, that is, have become copies without originals.
In his 1981 book titled Simulacra and Simulation where he coined the term “hyperreality,” Baudrillard foresaw precisely the world we live in now. (He died in 2007 before social media took off and before AI).
For him, modern societies had moved beyond merely representing reality. They now produce simulations that replace it. In earlier times, he said, an image or a sign referred to something real.
But in the contemporary era, the relationship between the sign and the real has collapsed. Copies no longer imitate an original; they become originals in themselves. The “perfect” BBL body, the filtered selfie, and the AI-polished essay do not reflect real bodies or human creativity. Instead, they establish new standards of what “real” means.
Baudrillard described this condition as “hyperreality.” It is a state where the simulation feels more real than the real. The natural body now seems inadequate compared to its sculpted counterpart; an unedited photo feels raw, even unattractive, next to a filtered image; and an AI-generated text reads smoother, more coherent, more “professional” than what a human might write.
The simulated has surpassed the real not by deceiving us but by seducing us. We prefer the perfected illusion.
In this world, the question “Is it real?” has lost its meaning. When the copy precedes and shapes the original, when the digital image or algorithmic output defines our sense of authenticity, the boundary between truth and falsehood dissolves.
We live, as Baudrillard put it, in “the desert of the real,” surrounded not by genuine experiences but by endless reproductions that refer only to themselves.
Today, with AI video tools like Sora capable of generating lifelike motion and emotion, Baudrillard’s vision has reached its full realization.
Seeing is truly no longer believing, as my 80-plus-year-old father-in-law recently said in frustration after I told him that several of the videos he excitedly shared with me on WhatsApp about Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traore and America’s Donald Trump were AI-generated fakes.
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