I don't see much to be frightened of. It has always been possible to create convincing fake photographs, at a price, while a photograph on its own (without proper provenance) has not usually been treated as important evidence (though there are some famous exceptions, e.g. Duchess of Argyll). The new technology just makes it cheaper for mischievous people to make fakes, and easier for people to dismiss an unprovenanced photo as a fake.
> It has always been possible to create convincing fake photographs...
Not really, depending on who you are "convincing". Up until relatively recently it was usually quite easy for photo experts (and often even less than experts, just people trained to look for certain "tells") to detect digital manipulation. But, on the flip side, yes, digital manipulation has occurred in the past, and I think it's a mistake to discount the strong negative effects it has had, e.g. many people having a completely unrealistic view of what most real humans actually look like (e.g. https://scottkelby.com/faith-hill-redbook-magazine-retouch-f...).
> The new technology just makes it cheaper for mischievous people to make fakes
That's a huge deal. Just look at the concerns around the use of LLMs to generate (and run) misinformation campaigns. Obviously those campaigns can and are run now, but the thought of it being incredibly cheap to do so, by people of extremely little skill, changes the information landscape drastically. Doing it for images is just another piece of the puzzle.
When one says fake photographs, that is not the same as saying digital manipulation. Photo manipulation is older than the transistor. See https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2012/09/28/before-phot... for some examples; these are admittedly artistic manipulations and fairly obvious, but it's entirely possible to apply the same techniques in other ways.
