00:00 Time now for our fact-checking segment, which means Semper Maxwell has sashayed into the studio for truth or fake. Great to see you.
00:07 Hi Mark.
00:07 You've told us about deep fakes of late, with a video that looked like an extract from one of our own news bulletins on the French side of things.
00:16 Our colleague Julie Anne LeFant, Julie being somewhat framed by whoever was using AI to dastardly means, supposedly reporting on an assassination plot on Emmanuel Macron.
00:28 Of course, though, it was fake, and you obviously disproved that in previous editions.
00:33 But since then, it continues, as things deal online, to go viral.
00:37 Yes, well, since yesterday when we debunked it, of course, this video continues to be spread on social media.
00:44 Here it is, been shared earlier today, tweeted earlier today.
00:48 And also, that pro-Russian propaganda outlet Pravda.fr, which I spoke about, which originally shared that video,
00:55 well, it has also responded to our debunk, it's sort of debunked our debunk.
01:00 And it has posted another article claiming that this supposed attempt by Keeve to assassinate Emmanuel Macron is not fake.
01:06 It says, "Journalists from France 24 described the plot as false and stressed they had never published such a video."
01:13 Before interviewing a supposed political expert who cast doubt on our assertion as well.
01:17 All in all, proving just how stubborn fake news and deep fakes can be to fact-checking, Mark.
01:22 So tell us again how this technology works, because what they did with Julian's performance, shall we say,
01:28 they made it look rather convincing, but there were things that gave away, weren't there, Emerald,
01:32 that it wasn't Julian saying the words that had been placed into his mouth using AI.
01:37 Yes, indeed. And here, like our colleague, Julien here, what Deepfake does is use artificial intelligence to imitate someone's voice or image,
01:46 making it possible to create a video or track or audio track of anyone to make them say anything at all.
01:51 The more footage of someone there is out there, the better the quality of the Deepfake will be, because it has more material to learn from.
01:58 Other recent examples include a Deepfake of Joe Biden's voice, which sounds very authentic.
02:05 Let's have a quick listen to it.
02:07 You know the value of voting Democratic on our votes count. It's important that you save your vote for the November election.
02:13 So this went viral just before the New Hampshire primary. In fact, as this tweet says, it was actually voters in Democrats in the New Hampshire primary were called,
02:25 got a robocall with this audio of Joe Biden, which discouraged them from taking part, from voting in the election.
02:32 And the scary thing is that this technology is only really just getting started.
02:36 It's improving at an alarming rate as a major election year gets underway, because, of course, 2024, half of the world's population goes to the polls.
02:45 And we're already seeing a lot of election interference using Deepfakes.
02:50 We're in the era of portal combat, as French intelligence have dubbed it.
02:55 Deepfakes, as you said, cropping up almost everywhere and recently used in the elections in Pakistan.
03:02 Tell us more on that.
03:03 Yes. Well, it was actually an election marred by Deepfakes.
03:07 Just the day before the January 8th parliamentary elections, a video went viral using the AI generated voice of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan,
03:17 in which he seemed to be telling voters to boycott the election.
03:21 Subsequently, more such fake videos and audio clips of other people from his party also made their way onto social media,
03:27 all with the same message spreading a lot of confusion at crunch time in the election.
03:32 An already tense election, I should say.
03:35 But Pakistan is also an interesting example because AI technology was also used by Imran Khan himself.
03:43 And that was from behind bars, illustrating how this tool can be used not just for fake news, but also, you know, in a productive way.
03:51 His team released features by him that used artificial intelligence to replicate his voice in order to rally his supporters during the campaign.
03:58 Imran Khan also used AI to proclaim victory in the election, which after candidates affiliated with his party won the largest number of parliamentary seats.
04:08 So ahead of the Indian and Russian and US elections this year, I'd just like to say that we should really not take things at face value.
04:19 And if it seems doubtful, it's worth double checking because the Deepfake era is well and truly upon us, Mark.
04:25 OK, and we await the forthcoming response from Pravda to this truth or fake edition.
04:31 Emerald, thank you very much indeed for giving us the debunk on that.
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