Believe it or not, another right-wing news network was fooled by an apparent AI blunder designed to denigrate poor people who can’t afford food because their food stamps have been suspended.
October 30th, newsmax — Television Network for Thinkers fox news Basically too liberal – airing an AI-generated video purportedly showing a woman getting angry at a supermarket checkout and threatening to leave with her groceries without paying because she was “cut off food stamps”.
The video is fake. and it is the same as the real one fox The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides critical food assistance to nearly 1 in 8 Americans each month and has long been a target of the right, is now under more pressure than ever amid a prolonged government shutdown and as funds needed to feed people run out.
This is a disturbing example of how ubiquitous AI technology is being used to deepfake our reality and spread misinformation, and it also shows how it can be misused to attack political opponents.
newsmax used a 15-second AI clip in a recent segment called “The Cost of Free Stuff.” In it, news anchor Carl Higbie lambasted the “rights” of SNAP recipients. They all live near or below the poverty line, and many are also children, the elderly, and the disabled.
“Perhaps that person is in that position because of their own decisions, and they should be making better life choices,” Higbie says of the millions of people who are now worried about being able to provide for themselves and their families. “I think the government shutdown woke people up to this right and this abuse.”
Higbee then begins to make fun of the SNAP recipient’s weight, and an AI video plays as he does so. Chiron, on the other hand, says, “We are the only country where the poor are obese.” Higbee projects his own thoughts on the lives of the women in the AI-generated videos.
“When you give people junk like this, they end up with poor health, like the woman I mentioned earlier,” Higbee said of AI counterfeits. “She probably also receives some kind of government medical assistance.”
But that’s not the case, because she’s not real. The clip was likely generated by OpenAI’s video app Sora 2, which was released last month and has already proven capable of fabricating convincing footage of people committing crimes. An AI clip length of 15 seconds is the maximum length a standard Sora user can generate.
newsmaxHowever, the company continues to post the clip uncensored on its social media pages, which in any other era would have been a major scandal. The blunder was so bad that it was reported on video. newsmax Commentator and intelligence analyst Ryan McBeth described the blunder as an innocent mistake with no malicious intent.
More salvage newsmaxFor the image, Macbeth said he collected evidence of the clip’s AI origins and sent it directly. newsmax Mr McBeth claimed that CEO Christopher Ruddy had responded that he “takes matters like this seriously” and that the department would make corrections. We cannot verify that this is the case, but again, clips of the segment will still be visible. newsmaxsocial.
The larger context, of course, is that the American right has proudly embraced the use of AI to churn out political images. The Trump administration frequently uses AI images to mock political opponents and glorify the president, while racist influencers promote AI-fabricated videos of black people trying to sell food stamps for cash. We can expect to see more incidents like this in the future. AI allows dubious news organizations to first spread misinformation and later issue invisible corrections.
Learn more about AI: Meta allows deepfake of Irish presidential election cancellation to go viral
