Knowledge, Integration and Scope of Deepfakes in Arts Education: The Development of Critical Thinking in Postgraduate Students in Primary Education and Master’s Degree in Secondary Education

If the appearance of digital images does not coincide with what they look like when they are presented as authentic photos or videos, we must reflect on concepts such as mimesis, truth, Artificial Intelligence and impersonation, something that is currently gaining prominence in the education of teachers and university professors. The current study presents the results of a research focused on the scope and knowledge of the so-called ‘deepfake images’ by the university student body of the Visual and Plastic Education subject, in the Graduate Certificate in Primary Education, and the student body of the Activity Design subject, in the master’s degree in Secondary Education—Specialty in Drawing, in the subject of Activity Design, University of Zaragoza. To do so, a quasi-experimental design with qualitative methodology was used, in which of 100 students participated. As a data collection strategy, reports were used, based on semi-structured questions, for the analysis of the development of critical thinking. The achieved results allow us to verify that deepfakes put forward an innovation in the study by university classrooms. The use of these deepfake representations is a novel issue that generates some moral and ethical controversy due to the different uses it can have, where the age of the interpreter is a differentiating factor for the knowledge and the possibilities that these imaginaries present. Therefore, it is a work area belonging to the field of artistic education on which little exploration and research has been conducted. Based on the obtained results, we conclude that there is currently a better awareness on the part of artistic education, and of education itself, in general terms, regarding the knowledge by the students, the relevance of its use, and the possibilities of these technological tools, both in their creative aspect and their misinformative ones.