'Things that are not happening': How AI and 'manipulated' deepfakes are running the show
The Independent reports a rioter admitting he was "paid to be here" is not real. A National Guard soldier filming himself being bombarded by "balloons full of oil"? That’s not a thing. A young man declaring his intention to "peacefully protest" before tossing a Molotov cocktail: humor.
“These are some things that are not happening on the streets of Los Angeles this week. But you may think they are if you’re getting your news from AI,” says the Independent as “fake AI-generated videos, photos, and factoids” about protests plaster themselves across social media. The problem is particularly bad on the “anything-goes” social networks like X, the paper reports.
"[W]hen it comes to videos, we’ve just been trained as an individual society to believe videos. Up until recently, we haven’t really had the opportunity to assume videos could be faked at the scale that it’s being faked at this point,” said James Cohen, a media professor and expert on internet literacy at CUNY Queens College. “Pictures are easily manipulated.”
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One fake video, called "Interviewing Gavin Newsom's protestors in Los Angeles" shows an influencer “wearing a too-clean T-shirt in the thick of a riot,” according to the Independent.
"Why are you rioting?" he asks a masked man.
"I don't know, I was paid to be here, and I just wanna destroy stuff," the man responds.
Most of the videos the Independent reviewed targeted conservative audiences “to reinforce … right-wing talking points,” but at least one TikTok account with more than 300,000 views appeared to target progressives seeking solidarity. Some have a tag indicating them as AI-generated but many can be easily missed or are nonexistent, reports the paper.
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The problem is only likely to get worse with President Donald Trump’s budget proposal halting state AI regulation, the Independent says, but the Better Business Bureau recommends identifying A.I. hack jobs by counting fingers and coat buttons. Writing and signs in generated video can also be blurry or incomprehensible. And look for “strange textures or a glossy effect,” says the BBB, because AI images often have “textured backgrounds or an airbrushed look.”
Read the full Independent report at this link
