Deep fake: How to detect malicious posts and why our brains love rumours
From the archives: Deep fakes are becoming evermore ubiquitous on the social media landscape. AI-generated pornographic images and video, featuring Taylor Swift, recently deluged social media – especially X, the site formerly known as Twitter. X took hours to remove the nonconsensual deepfake porn and eventually blocked searches for the singer’s name. Writing in the Guardian, author Jill Filipovic labelled deepfake porn “a potent new weapon for harassment”. It has renewed calls for toughening up the laws around AI, particularly when it is used for sexual harassment.
In this 2019 feature from the New Zealand Listener archives, Gavin Ellis investigates how message manipulation using bots, algorithms and now, AI software is making it harder to know what’s real – and threatening democracy itself.
The Word of the Year for 2019 will be “disinformation”. It is a natural extension of two of 2018′s Words of the Year: “toxic” and “misinformation”. Toxic misinformation has the ingredients that combine to produce disinformation.
Why not simply “fake news”? [Former] US President Donald Trump has appropriated that to undermine media he does not like. So journalists and academics have settled on “disinformation” to describe this dangerous form of “alternative facts” that has the potential to undermine civic institutions and democracy itself. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as information intended to mislead. We could add another layer: the identity of the perpetrator is often disguised.
Disinformation is not new. In 32BC, Octavian (later Emperor Augustus) used what was almost certainly a fake will to shaft his rival for leadership in Rome. According to the will, Mark Antony would bequeath large tracts of Rome’s territory in the Eastern Mediterranean to his children by Cleopatra. It was a classic piece of propaganda that labelled him a traitor. What is new is the use of social-media platforms and artificial intelligence to create an environment in which almost two-thirds of people - including New Zealanders - in the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer international survey did not know how to tell good journalism from rumour or falsehood.
Why will disinformation be front and centre? The answer is simple: in Europe this year there will be 13 parliamentary and 10 presidential elections, including elections to the European Parliament.
Canada and Australia will hold federal elections and in Asia there will be national elections in India, Indonesia and the Philippines and Japan will elect half the upper house in the Diet.
Israel and South Africa will also hold general elections. So, too, will North Korea, but it is safe to say that all the disinformation in that campaign will be state-generated on behalf of Kim Jong-un. In the US, manoeuvring will be well under way for the presidential primaries, with the first four ballots in February next year.
Rapid Alert System
In December, the European Commission produced a 10-point action plan to meet what it called an urgent need to preserve the integrity of member states’ electoral systems and infrastructure ahead of the elections. The plan includes a rapid alert system to address disinformation campaigns and additional resources and personnel for regional strategic communication taskforces.
Last year, we saw the shape of things to come. Venezuela had been mired in disinformation since socialist Hugo Chávez rose to power in the 1990s. His successor Nicolás Maduro’s control and coercion of the media meant he could manipulate at will information in the widely discredited May election. However, his opponents - including those in the US – also used social media to spread disinformation.