Your boss just rejected your fourth vacation request this year. No reason given. Just that sterile HR-laced “not approved” email pinging into your inbox like a slap made of Times New Roman.
You’re still blinking at the message when she posts a new photo from Cabo, her third “leadership retreat” this year.
There she is, sprawled on a sun chair, holding a margarita, captioned with something like, “Sometimes leadership is about recharging so you can empower others to shine.”
You try to laugh. It comes out dry.
And then your phone buzzes with another notification:
“New AI tool lets you create cinema-quality video from a single photo and 30 seconds of voice. Create anything. Say anything.”
A strange, uninvited thought enters your skull: what if she quit?
No, not actually. You’d never get that lucky. But what if…digitally?
What if she appeared, visibly shaken, remorseful, her voice trembling, to announce her departure?
A clean, heartfelt resignation. A fresh start.
For you, for everyone. Something righteous and quietly explosive, like office justice disguised as a press release.
It wouldn’t even be that hard.
Her LinkedIn has high-res photos from every angle. She talks nonstop during company webinars, tons of audio to train on.
Even her little mannerisms, how she adjusts her glasses before bullshitting an entire department, could be modeled now.
You pause.
Not because it’s wrong. But because it’s possible.
Scene One: Resignation Fantasy, Take One
You start scripting it in your head.
Setting: her office. You could recreate that from the background of a dozen Zoom calls.
She’d sit in that expensive ergonomic chair, the one she bought while telling your team there was no budget for new laptops.
The resignation would be graceful. Dignified. She’d take full responsibility for creating a toxic work environment.
She’d acknowledge the vacation request denials, the impossible deadlines, the way she somehow made everyone feel like they were failing even when they exceeded every metric.
“I’ve lost sight of what truly matters,” she’d say, voice catching slightly. “The people who make this company great deserve better leadership than I can provide.”
The video would end with her walking out of frame, leaving an empty chair that somehow felt like hope.
You’re halfway through planning the camera angles when you catch yourself.
This isn’t creative writing. This is…something else.
Proof of Concept: Deepfakes in the Wild
While you’re fantasizing about digital justice, others have already crossed this line.
A fake video of a prominent CEO announcing surprise retirement dropped their company’s stock 4% in under an hour. It took half a day for markets to realize the clip was synthetic.
By then, someone had made a killing off the confusion.
Cybercriminals cloned a European CEO’s voice, called the company’s financial officer, and casually requested $243,000 be wired to a vendor.
It worked. The money vanished. The audio was that convincing.
A remote employee created audio fakes of their manager approving projects that had never been greenlit.
Dozens of hours of work, entire teams misallocated, and no one noticed until the quarterly report didn’t match reality.
Digitally Violated
Being deepfaked carries significant psychological impact.
Victims report feelings similar to physical violation, seeing your face and voice controlled by others creates profound discomfort and vulnerability.
It’s a uniquely modern trauma that our psychological frameworks are still learning to understand.
Your boss, however terrible at approving time off, might experience genuine distress from having her digital likeness manipulated.
Which raises uncomfortable questions about causing mental harm, even to those who wield power over us.
The sense that your digital identity can be puppeteered without consent represents a violation that goes beyond traditional concepts of harm.
One Lie, 400 Slack Messages
You wouldn’t just be screwing her over.
You’d be confusing the entire organization. HR would panic. Leadership would crack down on internal communications. They might track it back to your device. They might not.
But the harm wouldn’t be confined to one smug beach photo, it would ripple outward, unpredictable and toxic.
The legal implications are murky.
Current laws around defamation, fraud, and identity theft weren’t designed for perfect digital impersonation.
You might face consequences ranging from civil liability to criminal charges, depending on your location and the specific harms caused.
You’d be beta-testing tomorrow’s legal precedents with your career.
Even worse: what if she used your trick against you?
A faked video of you insulting clients. Announcing your own resignation. Violating policies. Saying things you didn’t say in a tone that sounds exactly like yours.
You’d deny it, of course. You’d plead with IT. You’d try to explain that the blinking was too robotic or the mouth shape was slightly off.
But by then, the damage would be done. And your voice, your real voice, would sound like an excuse.
When Reality Becomes Optional
This is the liar’s dividend: the more perfect fakes become, the more plausible it becomes to deny truth.
When everything can be faked, nothing can be trusted.
A video of your boss making inappropriate comments? She’ll claim it’s synthetic.
A genuine whistleblower clip? Declared a fabrication.
When seeing and hearing no longer reliably indicate truth, institutional trust erodes quickly.
Organizations already struggle with rumor management. Now imagine a world where every internal video needs authentication before employees know whether to believe it.
Is It Still Wrong If They Deserve It?
The most compelling counterargument involves power asymmetry.
When individuals hold disproportionate power over others’ livelihoods, do different ethical standards apply to actions against them?
While labor organizers might cite the long history of asymmetrical tactics against structural power, creating false statements crosses a particular line that distinguishes resistance from deception.
The most defensible ethical position acknowledges both the legitimate grievances that might motivate such actions and the ethical boundaries they cross.
Better alternatives exist for addressing workplace injustice: organized collective action, documented reporting through proper channels, and when necessary, public whistleblowing with verifiable evidence.
The Deepfake Was Never the Point
Maybe the real question isn’t “what if you deepfaked your boss,” it’s why you wanted to.
Maybe it’s not about her face or her voice or her vacation schedule. Maybe it’s about how powerless you feel.
How absurd it is that you work 50 hours a week and still have to beg for time off.
How your accomplishments get “noted” while her quotes about innovation become motivational posters.
Maybe the fantasy isn’t revenge, maybe it’s control.
Even if it’s digital. Even if it’s fake.
But control built on illusion is fragile. It won’t hold. And deep down, you know this.
Next Update: Reality 2.0
As deepfake technology becomes ubiquitous, we need multi-layered approaches.
Technical solutions like authentication systems that verify video content are developing alongside deepfake technology, but detection and generation remain locked in an evolutionary arms race.
Legal frameworks offering more comprehensive protections around digital likeness are emerging inconsistently.
The most effective approaches focus on demonstrated harm rather than the technology itself.
Perhaps most important is developing widespread skepticism and verification habits for digital content. As audiences grow sophisticated about synthetic media possibilities, deepfakes may become less effective.
Upload the Lie or Live the Mess
There’s a version of this story where you create the deepfake. It spreads. It causes chaos. You get a moment of catharsis, maybe even viral fame.
And then what?
HR lockdown. Investigations. Legal action. Maybe worse…and good luck landing another job that doesn’t involve a deep fryer.
And there’s another version where you take a screenshot of that beach post, forward it to your coworkers, and say, “Hey, anyone else noticing a pattern?” Where you gather. Organize. Push back. Demand better.
It won’t be as cinematic. Just people. Messy, complicated, real people.
But that path has one advantage: it’s real.
Want more analysis that doesn’t deepfake its way around uncomfortable questions? Follow [Futuredamned], where we don’t just predict the future—we reluctantly participate in it.
