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.
Well, we warned you all, but you didn’t listen. Expect tons of this garbage next year, and more importantly, expect it to work.
We are just starting the misinformation age, it will get worse
I would say before we were in the misinformation age. I think I’d call this coming stuff the disinformation age. Disinformation existed before, but this is another level. Creating totally new information to mislead people is somewhat different that misrepresenting what happened.
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.
Here is the video. It is actually pretty funny. I hate Trump as much as the next lemming, but this really is an obvious parody once you watch the whole video. I think NBC is complaining not because of the parody, but because the fake voice-over is too good and sets a bad precedent. It shows how good the tech is and how it could be used more subtly to create fake news (not that there aren’t already many ways to do that).
https://x.com/lacivitac/status/1722390782387089643?s=46&t=a3ohj6oncFjZ8uOAQMEdJg
Agreed. It’s clearly intended to be funny. The fact that people are losing their minds about this and think it should be legally actionable are a) wrong, and b) terrifying me, because this is clearly parody and protected by the first amendment. I hate Trump too, but that doesn’t mean we should seek to set legal precedent that limits the ability of people to make fun of the political process. Sheesh. That goes nowhere good.
I laughed, at first, but now I simply feel fear for the future where anything could be a lie. And if everything’s a lie, nothing is the truth. Much of the world stands in a terrifying post-truth political reality as AI begins to take off to enable it.
When nothing is true, anything is possible.
I have that same feeling in my gut. I imagine we’ll need to create AI to find and counter the AI being used to create the fake news? It feels like an arms race that could escalate quickly.
It’s not really that obvious that it’s a parody. You’re right about the voice-over being too good and it’s a very very dangerous precedent.
I’m actually really worried about the complete inability for viewers of media to know what’s real and what’s fake given how good the tech is. I know not to trust almost anything on the internet, but so many people don’t know that.
There’s probably a good case for NBC to sue over this.
Exactly. This isn’t about hating Trump, it’s about a potentially powerful tool becoming basically free, with the potential to ruin the ability to trust our own eyes and ears.
