A senior Trump advisor shared a video that seems to show an NBC reporter badmouthing Republican presidential candidates. It appears AI was used to imitate the reporter’s voice.
Libel, fraud, and trademark infringement are not protected by the 1st amendment.
The question would be if an average person viewing the video would know that it was fake or if they would believe that the reporter had actually said those things.
If the average person would be misled about their reporting, NBC certainly has a case against the video’s use.
I can’t create a deepfake of Donald Trump saying that he loves Hitler and plans to continue his agenda if he wins the election “for the lolz” and post it online without facing serious legal consequences, even if I am protected in doing the same with a cartoon version of him voiced by a parody impersonation.
You actually are protected to do that, assuming it’s clear to the viewer it’s being used with humorous intent to be critical of Trump. Even the current congressional legislation on this topic carves out exceptions for digital manipulation and construction for parody, satire, and criticism.
If you’ve watched the video, I’m surprised you don’t find it an obvious attempt at humor.
Parody and satire are done by someone else. Kinda like your example of SNL. It’s very very clear that when Will Ferrell was impersonating Dubya, it wasn’t actually him. When Weird Al sings about his bologna, no one actually thought it was The Knack.
This is AI, putting a live person’s voice into their own mouth, saying words they never said. That should be immediately apparent as obviously different to parody and satire.
Defending this as OK behaviour is willful ignorance and reeks of one particular political party that seems to rely on lying directly to it’s constituents as a main promotional tactic.
