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May 30 (Reuters) – (Note: Strong language in paragraph 10)
“I actually like Ron DeSantis a lot,” Hillary Clinton reveals in a surprise online endorsement video. “He’s just the kind of person this country needs, and I really mean that.”
Joe Biden finally let the mask slip, unleashing harsh language on a transgender person. “You will never be a real woman,” the president said.
Welcome to America’s 2024 presidential race, where the truth is up for grabs.
The Clinton and Biden deepfakes – realistic but fabricated videos created by AI algorithms trained on vast amounts of online footage – are among thousands appearing on social media, blurring fact and fiction in a polarized world of US politics.
While such synthetic media has been around for a few years, it has been turbocharged in the past year by several new “generative AI” tools like Midjourney that make it cheap and easy to create convincing deepfakes, according to interviews. of Reuters in almost two. dozen specialists in fields including AI, online disinformation and political activism.
“It’s very difficult for voters to distinguish the real from the fake. And you can imagine how Trump supporters or Biden supporters could use this technology to make the opponent look bad,” said Darrell West, senior fellow at the Brookings Center. of the Institute for Technological Innovation.
“There may be things going down before the election that no one has a chance to remove.”
Tools that can generate deepfakes are being released with little or imperfect guardrails to prevent harmful misinformation as the tech sector engages in an AI arms race, said Aza Raskin, co-founder of the Center for Human Technology. , a nonprofit that studies the impact of technology on society.
Former President Donald Trump, who will compete with DeSantis and others for the Republican nomination to face Biden, shared a doctored video of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper himself last month on his social media platform Truth Social.
“That was President Donald J. Trump ripping us a new asshole here on CNN’s live presidential townhall,” Cooper said in the footage, though the words didn’t match his lip movements.
CNN said the video was a deepfake. A representative for Trump did not respond to a request for comment on the clip, which was on his son Donald Jr’s Twitter page this week.
Although major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have made efforts to ban and remove deepfakes, their effectiveness in policing such content varies.
DEEPFAKE PENCE, NOT TRUMP
There were three times as many video deepfakes of all types and eight times as many voice deepfakes posted online this year compared to the same time period in 2022, according to DeepMedia, a company working on tools to detect synthetic media.
In total, about 500,000 video and voice deepfakes will be shared on social media sites worldwide by 2023, DeepMedia estimates. Voice cloning used to cost $10,000 in server and AI-training costs until late last year, but now startups are offering it for a few dollars, it said.
No one is sure where the generative AI road is headed or how to effectively police its power for mass misinformation, according to the people interviewed.
Industry leader OpenAI, which changed the game in recent months with its release of ChatGPT and the updated GPT-4 model, is grappling with the issue itself. CEO Sam Altman told Congress this month that election integrity is a “significant area of concern” and urged swift regulation of the sector.
Unlike some smaller startups, OpenAI has taken steps to restrict the use of its products in politics, according to a Reuters review of the terms of use of half a dozen leading companies that offer generative services- AI.
However, guardrails have gaps.
For example, OpenAI says it prohibits its image generator DALL-E from creating public figures – and indeed, when Reuters tried to create images of Trump and Biden, the request was blocked and someone appeared message saying “this may not comply with our content policy.”
However, Reuters has produced images of at least a dozen other US politicians, including former Vice-President Mike Pence, who is also weighing a White House run for 2024.
OpenAI also restricts any “scaled” use of its products for political purposes. It prohibits using its AI to send mass personalized emails to constituents, for example.
The company, which is backed by Microsoft, explained its political policies to Reuters in an interview but did not respond to further requests for comment about enforcement gaps in its policies, such as blocking the creation of images of politician
Some smaller startups have no explicit restrictions on political content.
Midjourney, which launched last year, is the leading player in AI-generated images, with 16 million users on its official Discord server. The app, which ranges from free to $60 a month depending on factors like image volume and speed, is a favorite of AI designers and artists for its ability to generate hyper-realistic portraits of celebrities and politicians, according to four AI researchers and creators interviewed.
Midjourney did not respond to a request for comment for this article. In an online chat on Discord last week, CEO David Holz said the company likely made changes before the election to combat misinformation.
Midjourney wants to work with an industry solution to enable traceability of AI-generated images with the digital equivalent of watermarking and will consider blocking images of political candidates, Holz added.
REPUBLICAN AI-GENERATED AD
Even as the industry grapples with how to prevent misuse, some political players themselves are seeking to harness the power of generative AI to improve campaigns.
So far, the only high-profile AI-generated political ad in the US is one published by the Republican National Committee in late April. The 30-second ad, which the RNC revealed was entirely generated by AI, used fake images to suggest a dire scenario should Biden be re-elected, in which China invades Taiwan and San Francisco is shut down of crime.
The RNC did not respond to requests for comment on the ad or its broader use of AI. The Democratic National Committee declined to comment on its use of the technology.
Reuters analyzed all Republican presidential campaigns on their use of AI. Most did not respond, although Nikki Haley’s team said they do not use the technology and longshot candidate Perry Johnson’s campaign said it uses AI for “generational copy and iteration,” without providing more details.
The potential for generative AI to generate campaign emails, posts and ads is irresistible to some activists who think the low-cost technology could level the playing field in elections.
Even deep in rural Hillsdale, Michigan, machine intelligence is on the march.
Jon Smith, Republican chair for Michigan’s 5th Congressional district, is holding several educational meetings so his allies can learn to use AI for social media and ad generation.
“AI helps us play against the big cats,” he said. “I see the biggest increase in local races. A 65-year-old man, a farmer and county commissioner, he could easily be outdone by a younger cat with technology.”
Political consultancies are also trying to use AI, further blurring the line between real and fake.
Numinar Analytics, a political data company focused on Republican clients, has begun experimenting with AI content generation for audio and images, as well as voice-generation to potentially create personalized messaging in a candidate’s voice , founder Will Long said in an interview.
Meanwhile, Democratic polling and strategy group Honan Strategy Group is trying to develop an AI survey bot. It hopes to unroll a female bot in time for the 2023 municipal elections, CEO Bradley Honan said, citing research that both men and women are more likely to talk to a female interviewer.
Reporting by Alexandra Ulmer and Anna Tong in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Christina Anagnostopoulos, Zeba Siddiqui and Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Kenneth Li, Ross Colvin and Pravin Char
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Alexandra Ulmer
Anna Tong
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