'Deepfake' AI videos are very deceptive forms of videomaking, and we’ve already begun to see how these videos can be used to undermine elections by claiming a candidate has done or said something that never happened.
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00:00The spread of misinformation through deepfake videos has the potential to undermine the democratic process,
00:05especially during elections. A deepfake is a digital image, video, or sound file of a real
00:11person that has been edited to make a realistic but false depiction.
00:16Open up the door there's a bomb in there.
00:18These videos may appear real but have been generated using readily available artificial intelligence.
00:24This was this was very truly surprising for me.
00:27Gone are the days when political parodies were easy to spot as
00:30fake forms of fun to poke at our elected leaders.
00:33If you are seeing me now it means that I don't like it.
00:37I believe that diplomacy should be the cornerstone of any foreign policy.
00:43And I can see Russia from my house.
00:46It's a very deceptive form of video making and we've already begun to see how these videos
00:51can be used to undermine elections by claiming a candidate has done or said something that never
00:58really happened. A prime example of this came during the US election when tech billionaire
01:04Elon Musk shared a video of democrat presidential hopeful Kamala Harris that looked like an official
01:10campaign ad.
01:12I was selected because I am the ultimate diversity hire. I'm both a woman and a person of color
01:17so if you criticize anything I say you're both sexist and racist.
01:21And enduring.
01:22And just remember when voting this November it is important to see what can be
01:27unburdened by what has been.
01:29And by what has been, I mean Joe Biden.
01:33According to social media metrics at the time the false campaign ad received nearly 140 million
01:41views and it looks pretty close to real.
01:44Definitely sounds very real.
01:46But it was entirely artificially generated and Kamala Harris never said those things.
01:52There was also images circulating appearing to show the former vice president wearing a
01:57survey uniform.
01:59It's something we've been seeing creeping into Australian politics too.
02:04During the Queensland state election in 2024 the Liberal National Party splashed their
02:08social media accounts with a video of then-premier Stephen Miles.
02:13It was shared with the caption,
02:15POV my rent is up $60 a week my power bill is up 20%
02:20but the premier made a sandwich on TikTok.
02:24Now there's some obvious anomalies in this video that clearly show it's a fake
02:28and it was also posted with a label indicating that it had been artificially generated.
02:34In another example that came around the same time though,
02:37the Australian Labor Party posted a video showing opposition leader Peter Dutton
02:41apparently dancing with the caption,
02:44dance if you want to see nuclear power plants built in everyone's backyard.
02:48It's not incredibly realistic and so it's clear again that this video is also a fake.
02:54But artificial intelligence and deepfake videography remain in their infancy
02:59and the quality of such imagery is only going to improve in time.
03:04Right now there are no specific laws in Australia that prohibit the use of artificial
03:08intelligence in the production of election campaign materials.
03:11The Electoral Act does make it an offence to deliberately mislead or deceive voters
03:17but this technology is still too new to be completely regulated,
03:20especially when third parties are generating or sharing this kind of content.
03:25The fear is as technology becomes more adept,
03:28it will become a lot easier to mimic public figures
03:31and a lot harder to determine what is real and what is fake.
03:35The kinds of programs that make these videos are easily accessible.
03:39Truly anyone with a phone or a computer and an internet access
03:43can quickly produce a deepfake image or video.
03:47And these videos can have very real consequences.
03:51So when something pops up on your feed,
03:53how do you analyze that in the moment to understand whether it's trustworthy or not?
03:58The first thing to ask yourself is who is sharing this video and what is their agenda?
04:03If the video mainly comes from an unverified or anonymous account,
04:07it's probably best to check whether this information is truthful.
04:11Check if the video has been reported by reputable sources.
04:15For example, the video Musk shared of Kamala Harris.
04:19If it was an official campaign ad, it would have been shared on the Democrats' verified pages
04:24and Kamala Harris herself would have responded to the claims that she had said those things.
04:29In this case also, since Elon Musk was actively campaigning for the Republicans
04:33and since he has become a special employee of the Trump administration,
04:37the fact that he shared this video of Kamala Harris suggests that it was to fit a narrative
04:42rather than to depict truth in its entirety.
04:46For regular internet users, it pays to develop a healthy skepticism of everything you see.
04:52Consider it's fake until otherwise proven true.
04:56I don't know.
04:58Killmonger was right.
05:00Now, you see, I would never say these things, at least not in a public address.
05:06But someone else would.
05:08Someone like Jordan Peele.
05:13Thank you and stay woke.