Remember the “Drunk Pelosi” video? AI-driven deepfakes make disinformation much more toxic – Medianation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdoo5ndjwga

Should I worry about Deepfake videos? Well, certainly. However, I tended to think that some skepticism was guaranteed.

My main example is the video of Nancy Pelosi, a 6-year-old house speaker from the time, who is said to look drunk. The video simply slowed down to 75%, and the intended right-wing audience thought this crude change was proof that she was loaded, so “we're told.” Who needs deepfakes when a slutty viewer is fooled by such a crap? People believe in what they want to believe.

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However, deep fakes are getting better. This morning I would like to draw attention to the very important story of the New York Times (Gift Link).

“The technology amplified social and partisan divisions, particularly on the far right, that have surged in recent elections in Germany, Poland and Portugal, and strengthened anti-government sentiment,” wrote reporters Stephen Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson. Some examples:

• Romania had to redo last year's presidential election after the court ruled that one of its candidates' AI manipulation could have changed the outcome.
• The AI-generated Tiktok video was misrepresented by Donald Trump, who supports the far-right candidate in Poland.
• Another fake video from last year's US election was tied to Russia, showing that Kamala Harris said Trump “refused to die with dignity.”

Like Pelosi's videos, fakes have long been polluting the media environment. So I was impressed by Isabel Francis Wright of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue told The Times: “You had to choose between scale or quality – essentially, and you can give it, but now you can have both.

In other words, the devil is exponentially expanding in both quality and quantity. Given that, it is unlikely that we will be able to see any more Russian-generated memes of demonic Hillary Clinton boxing with Jesus, a particularly unfortunate example of Russian propaganda from 2016.

And I still have some gift links to hand out by the end of the month, so here's a time quiz with 10 videos. Can you tell me the difference? I didn't do very well.

So, what can we do to protect our political discourse? We are sure we can all agree that it has already turned into a shockingly bad shape, dominated by lies from Trump and his allies amplified on Fox News and social media. Like I said, people will believe what they want to believe. But AI-generated Deepfake videos only make things worse.