Experts are ringing the alarm bells about the role that artificial intelligence could play in this year’s elections. A.I. can create deep fake videos, sound clips, and images that could have a significant impact on the election results for any candidate. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Experts are ringing the alarms about the role that artificial intelligence could play in this year’s election. AI can create deepfake videos, sound clips, images that have a significant impact on what voters believe. Talk about deepfake. Give us an example of deepfake.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. There’s a lot of videos going around right now that appear to show, just some funny ones, not harmful, but President Biden and President Trump playing video games and talking over the headsets. The voices sound identical. And that’s fun and harmless. But if you were to see these things, a lot of these are getting really good. And if you didn’t know it was fake, I’m sure some people out there say, oh my God, why are these guys actually doing this? Because they are very realistic at this point. And you can take that and you could say, hey, look, we’ve got this politician having sex with a penguin. Here’s the video. You can make that video fairly easily these days because of this AI technology that has just blossomed in the last 12 months.
Mike Papantonio: I think on farronbalanced a show that you do, you did this story on Ron DeSantis and how he had took images of Trump and he made it look like Trump was putting his arms around Anthony Fauci. Remember that?
Farron Cousins:: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And so that, but it was so real. I mean, actually front pages of papers were covering that. But there’s no limit to what they can do here. They can make anything look legitimate and they can create, in the voter’s minds, ideas that are completely, so far off base, they have no anchor in reality.
Farron Cousins: Well, let me put it this way because again, the experts are saying, one of them says, I expect a tsunami of misinformation. Because anybody can do it. Other countries can do it and send it over here. But let me explain it to you this way, how easily duped the voters are. Because we all remember Sarah Palin when she said, I can see Russia from my house, except Sarah Palin never said, I can see Russia from my house. That was Tina Fey impersonating Sarah Palin that said that.
Mike Papantonio: No kidding.
Farron Cousins:: But everybody remembers Sarah Palin saying that.
Mike Papantonio: Wait, wait a second. You know what? I never knew that.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I never knew that. She never really said it.
Farron Cousins: She never said it.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. But it took all life of its own.
Farron Cousins: It does. Because all it takes is that one pop culture moment or that one really good fake video. It’s almost like the Mandela effect. You think you remember something and then other people think they do. So it becomes reality.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. And that’s the thing. That’s the hit on Sarah Palin. I first of all, I did not know that. Thank you for that information. And I’ve used that so many times when I talk about her, you know, she can see Russia from her house. Right. But that’s the idea. Now we’ve taken it to a whole new level though. Right.
Farron Cousins: And now you can actually have her say that with her voice and her video.
Mike Papantonio: Not Tina Fey. Actually, somebody that is her.
Farron Cousins: Right. And we’re gonna see that, especially when you look at the two people at the top of both tickets. Okay. It’s not out of the ordinary for either one of them to say something crazy and stupid.
Mike Papantonio: Well, they might have.
Farron Cousins: So you don’t have to go too far with it.
Mike Papantonio: Right. They might have Biden falling down. They might have him stumbling downstairs or saying stupid stuff. They might have Trump saying the most outrageous things that you go, I can’t believe he just said that. It’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not.
Farron Cousins: Exactly. Exactly.
