'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 Elon
01:04Musk shared a video of democrat presidential hopeful Kamala Harris that looked like an
01:09official campaign ad. I was selected because I am the ultimate diversity hire. I'm both a woman
01:15and a person of color so if you criticize anything I say you're both sexist and racist.
01:22And just remember when voting this November it is important to see what can be
01:27unburdened by what has been and 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. Definitely sounds very real but it was entirely
01:47artificially generated and Kamala Harris never said those things. There was also images circulating
01:54appearing to show the former vice president wearing a survey uniform. It's something we've
02:00been seeing creeping into Australian politics too. During the Queensland state election in 2024 the
02:07Liberal National Party splashed their social media accounts with a video of then premier Stephen
02:12Miles. He was shared with the caption POV my rent is up $60 a week my power bill is up 20%
02:20but the premier made a sandwich on TikTok. Now there's some obvious anomalies in this video
02:27that clearly show it's a fake and it was also posted with a label indicating that it had been
02:31artificially generated. In another example that came around the same time though the Australian
02:37Labor Party posted a video showing opposition leader Peter Dutton apparently dancing with the
02:43caption dance if you want to see nuclear power plants built in everyone's backyard. It's not
02:49incredibly realistic and so it's clear again that this video is also a fake but artificial
02:55intelligence and deepfake videography remain in their infancy and the quality of such imagery is
03:01only going to improve in time. Right now there are no specific laws in Australia that prohibit
03:07the use of artificial intelligence in the production of election campaign materials.
03:11The Electoral Act does make it an offence to deliberately mislead or deceive voters but this
03:17technology is still too new to be completely regulated especially when third parties are
03:22generating or sharing this kind of content. The fear is as technology becomes more adept it will
03:28become a lot easier to mimic public figures and a lot harder to determine what is real and what
03:34is fake. The kinds of programs that make these videos are easily accessible. Truly anyone with
03:40a phone or a computer and an internet access can quickly produce a deepfake image or video
03:47and these videos can have very real consequences. So when something pops up on your feed how do you
03:54analyze that in the moment to understand whether it's trustworthy or not? The first thing to ask
03:59yourself is who is sharing this video and what is their agenda? If the video mainly comes from an
04:05unverified or anonymous account it's probably best to check whether this information is truthful.
04:11Check if the video has been reported by reputable sources. For example the video Musk shared of
04:17Kamala Harris. If it was an official campaign ad it would have been shared on the democrats verified
04:23pages and Kamala Harris herself would have responded to the claims that she had said those
04:28things. In this case also since Elon Musk was actively campaigning for the republicans and since
04:34he has become a special employee of the Trump administration the fact that he shared this video
04:39of Kamala Harris suggests that it was to fit a narrative rather than to depict truth in its
04:44entirety. For regular internet users it pays to develop a healthy skepticism of everything you see.
04:52Consider is fake until otherwise proven true. I don't know. Killmonger was right.
05:00Now you see I would never say these things at least not in a public address but someone else
05:07someone like Jordan Peele. Thank you and stay woke.