Although the growing amount of disinformation on social media is worrying, the amount of people who believe it is more worrisome, and the fact people can know about it and let it slide, is even more frightening.
A loophole in Facebook’s policy has allowed damaging misinformation surrounding United States President Joe Biden to spread. In actuality, the video being shared showed Biden placing an “I Voted” sticker on his granddaughter’s chest. The video being shared removed the context making it appear he is sexually assaulting her.
According to CNN, “Meta’s manipulated media policy applies only to video that has been altered by artificial intelligence and that makes it appear as if a person said something they did not. The policy may be enforced only in situations where both conditions are fulfilled. The policy also does not apply to manipulated audio.”
This is an abysmal policy that would allow for a plethora of disinformation, including false allegations of sexual assault, to remain and prosper. There should be no tolerance for disinformation to pursue. Lies can and will not only destroy the reputation of those lied about, but also ruin the credibility of those who believe they are helping by unknowingly spreading misinformation.
Only applying a manipulated media policy to deepfakes is incredibly risky and insanely stupid. I of course believe more legal action should be taken against those who create deepfakes of people to ruin their reputation. Images and videos generated by artificial intelligence (AI) can be catastrophic.
I feel I must say there is a level in how destructive deepfakes can be. Some can be harmless. For example, in the past and currently, I have seen AI-generated videos of Biden, Donald Trump and Barack Obama playing Wii Sports and acting like good friends. These videos are clearly made in good fun and no one in their right mind would ever believe these videos to be authentic.
There is, however, a more nefarious side to deepfakes. Most notably would be AI-generated pornography. This is where people who do not consent to have naked pictures of them are generated by AI to be naked. This is clearly sexual assault and those who partake in generating such images should be prosecuted as such.
Other terrible ways of using AI technology could be manipulating a video to make someone say something bigoted or to make them confess to a crime they did not commit to the point where a reasonable person would believe it to be genuine. I feel this should be treated as slander.
We as a society should not tolerate any disinformation or false accusations. We need to trust others if we want to run a successful society which means we can not and should not put up with liars. I suggest we find a way to regulate AI better and to reform our justice system to deal with crimes such as libel and slander in more productive ways.
Our justice system may look dim to give the right people what they deserve, but we can only be optimistic. Whether it be liars or any other criminals, we can only hope they are brought to justice.
Nico Brazill can be contacted at
nbrazill@kscequinox.com
