Deepfakes: when you can’t believe your eyes, what can you believe?
Recently I sent out a link to an article on deepfakes that appeared in Reuters (not paywalled): https://www.reuters.com/world/us/deepfaking-it-americas-2024-election-collides-with-ai-boom-2023-05-30/.
Here’s another perspective from Jim Puzzanghera published in the paywalled Boston Globe where the content is nearly identical but adds a couple of political points. From the Globe:
There are very few rules right now and few, if any, are likely coming. Democrats in Congress have introduced legislation mandating the disclosure of AI in political ads, but no Republicans have signed on.
and . . .
On June 22, the Federal Election Commission deadlocked along party lines on a petition by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen to consider rules banning AI deepfake campaign ads. All three Republicans opposed the move, with GOP commissioner Allen Dickerson saying the agency lacked the authority.
and . . . from Republican strategist Eric Wilson (not to be confused with the true conservative and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project Rick Wilson) who maintains that regulation isn’t needed right now:
I want to tamp down the moral panic because this is something that happens with any new technology. You go back to TV debates and people were worried about what that would do for voters,” he said. “We’re having conversations about it, but no one’s sitting around and having struggle sessions around artificial intelligence on our side. . . .
We are unlikely to see professional campaigns use generative AI for disinformation purposes. That’s not to say that malign actors like nation states aren’t going to try it.
Yeah. What malign nation states could Wilson possibly be referring to? Maybe states like Russian and China that are already hard at work confusing the American public with fake news and outright untruths? Who are already busy trying to undermine trust in our institutions, particularly the federal government? Who are hoping for an America increasingly fragmented into warring tribes? Whose activities support the agenda of the Radical Right? Those nation states?
Other “malign actors” come principally from the ranks of the hard political Right within the U.S., whose activities are aimed at—as Steve Bannon has aptly formulated—”deconstructing the administrative state.” Actually, the extreme Right has taken Bannon a step further, not just to “deconstruct,” but apparently to burn down the whole house, with the possible exception of the military.
Furthermore, what are we to make of Eric Wilson’s assurance that “we are unlikely to see professional campaigns to use generative AI for disinformation purposes.” Unlikely? When push comes to shove, how “unlikely” will it be that professional campaigns eschew generative AI? Even giving Wilson the benefit of the doubt—i.e. telling the truth as he sees it—a lot can change in the next 15 months. If deepfakes become common, thanks to nonpartisan mischief-makers as well as shadowy political operatives, the temptation to use them will wax quickly, particularly for the side that is predisposed to making ends justify means.
Political asymmetry weighted toward the Right increases the risk of autocracy
Does Eric Wilson think Democrats are too naïve to see that the use of deepfakes—whether by malign states or malign elements within our country—favor the present-day Republican Party? There’s asymmetry resulting from the unscrupulous use of disinformation already being created by the Right, in contrast to Democrats’ reluctance to play dirty. The resulting confusion about what is true and who should be held accountable leads to destabilization and movement toward anarchy. Severe destabilization, even more a state of anarchy, invites the formation of an autocracy with a strongman at its head. That’s the explicit desire of hero-worshipping Trumpists—a minority but an extremely zealous minority. Since it’s easier to tear down rather than build up, they are right now in a tear-down phase. They don’t seem to be thinking of how they are going to build up from the rubble, apart from giving allegiance to the man who has claimed “I alone can fix it.”
Politicians like Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy may believe the Republican establishment can keep the fires of far-right radicalism in check, while still thwarting the Democrats’ agenda. They are hoping that discrediting Donald Trump by the DOJ and special counsel Jack Smith can cut down on the oxygen and de-energize the Trump base. It’s an old-fangled political balancing act, and such balancing acts have been disrupted in unforeseen ways by the aggressive use of digital technology for the last dozen years.
It’s quite possible that deepfakes may tip the political advantage in favor of organizations who either use them the most, or more likely rely on unscrupulous actors for whom the professionals have plausible deniability. Republicans in Congress show no willingness to rein them in, which pretty much tells you who expects the most to gain and little to lose from their proliferation. After all, according to ancient military strategist Sun-Tzu, “all warfare is based on deception.” There’s hardly a more effective tool of deception than deepfakes. They may appear to be clumsy weapons for now, but they can be fine-tuned in the many months before the 2024 general election. And we can’t expect the gridlocked federal legislature to do anything about it.