Democratic Senator Cory Booker blocked a piece of bipartisan legislation that was sponsored by Republican senator Ted Cruz, just so Cruz couldn’t get a much-needed victory ahead of November’s election. Then, Congress promised that they would enact strong legislation regulating the use of artificial intelligence ahead of the election, but so far those promises have been empty. 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: Democratic Senator Cory Booker blocked a piece of bipartisan legislation that was sponsored by Republican Senator Ted Cruz, just so Cruz could get a much needed victory, maybe lose in November election. That’s what it was about. But you know, there’s another part to it, I think it’s about money too. Anytime there’s a story about Cory Booker or Ted Cruz, follow the money. Okay. Just follow the money. You’re gonna find that’s what this is about. Farron, this was legislation that would’ve prevented fabricated porn, AI porn generated fabricated porn where a child is in, and there’s case after case.
Farron Cousins: A 15-year-old.
Mike Papantonio: 15-year-old.
Farron Cousins: Who spoke to the Senate.
Mike Papantonio: Yes, exactly. The 15-year-old, they create this porn with AI and they have it all over the world and makes it look like she’s some kind little pervert. Cory Booker said, no, that’s okay. Let’s do that. Let’s allow that. He’s the only one who said it. Gave no reason for doing it. Follow the money on Cory Booker. He is, I swear to God, I’ve never done a story on Cory Booker where there was not a money trail to either big pharma, weapons industry, here, tech. Tech is his guy that they’re trying to protect. Now, you have your point. Your point is, no, it’s about the election and I think that’s a factor. But talk about it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Ted Cruz right now is in a neck and neck race with Colin Allred in the state of Texas. In fact, there’s actually a poll, the most recent poll that came out, Allred is ahead by one point, which is not much. So Cruz needed a victory, something to take back to the people of Texas and this could have been one of those victories because it’s a good bill. In my book, Ted Cruz is the proverbial stopped clock. He is right twice a day because there’s a couple things that Cruz has said over the years where I’ve sat here and said, hey, I agree with him. Term limits for the courts, term limits for Congress. I like it. But this was a good thing. Had the support, God, how many Democrats do you have on it? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Mike Papantonio: Virtually, name the Democrat. Name the Democrats. Just think, these are Democrats who said, we gotta have this because of what happens to kids if we don’t.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Its Amy Klobuchar, Richard Blumenthal, Jacky Rosen, Laphonza Butler, John Hickenlooper, Raphael Warnock, Martin Heinrich, all of them co-sponsored this with Ted Cruz. And Booker comes along at the last minute. They’re about to bring it out. Here is our bill. We’re gonna protect people from revenge porn. And Booker says, I’m submitting a formal objection to this legislation, which halts it immediately and then what usually happens in that situation is that whoever puts forward the formal objection offers the reasoning. Booker says, nope, I’m not gonna give you any reason at all as to why I’m blocking this. Now, let’s all go on our six week vacation.
Mike Papantonio: Here’s something you need to know, Mr. Booker, here’s what you need to know. This revenge porn that we’re talking about, I represent human trafficking victims. I represent kids that are 14 and 16 years old. What these folks are doing is you’ll have an organization in in Canada, for example, MindGeek, they’ll call traffickers and they’ll say, we want video of a 14-year-old being raped or sodomized in a hotel. That trafficker then goes out and does it, sends it to them, and they put it all over the country. He knows this. He knows that this is part of the human trafficking saga. He knows how ugly it is. But I’m telling you, I really do believe this, I think some of it has to do with that election. But I think if you follow the money on Cory Booker, every single time he votes, you’re gonna find money in his pocket. Every time.
Mike Papantonio: Congress promised that they would enact strong legislation regulating the use of artificial intelligence ahead of the election. But so far, those promises have been empty, totally empty. This, we are living in a world of deep fake, that’s what the story’s about, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Give me some examples. We were talking before, some of these examples are so absurd.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. You had the AI image that Donald Trump had shared that said, hey, Taylor Swift endorsed me. There’s all these Swifties for Trump. There’s been these very weird videos that people have made that show Kamala and Donald as a couple with a child together. They look very happy in the video, but obviously it’s not real. And of course, the biggest one, and somebody did get prosecuted for this, was when they used AI to recreate President Biden’s voice and sent that out to a bunch of voters, giving them misinformation about primaries and everything. So that one was really the big one. All the other ones are kind of funny and weird.
Mike Papantonio: But that one was caught.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: That one was caught early enough to fix it. What we’re gonna see, my prediction is this is the new October surprise. AI deepfake is the new October surprise. And the election’s gonna be over, and they’re not gonna be able to do a thing about it because it’s done. All the damage is done.
Farron Cousins: Well, and you had Democrats, Amy Klobuchar said, I got three pieces of legislation to do this. You had, Todd Young, Republican from Indiana who said, I’ve got legislation to do this.
Mike Papantonio: Pay attention to it.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Chuck Schumer said, well, we got a lot to do, guys. I don’t know that we can really get to your much needed legislation. So you had both parties working on this issue because they do understand that this is a problem and it’s a big deal. But I think Schumer is just so far behind because of his age.
Mike Papantonio: He’s a dinosaur. He doesn’t even understand AI.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. He’s like, I don’t know what those initials mean, but he’s the gatekeeper right now for the Senate, because he is the majority leader.
Mike Papantonio: I swear, if you were to ask him five questions about AI, he could maybe answer one, maybe, depends what it is.
Farron Cousins: Look, AI has some great uses. It’s also a very dangerous tool for artists because it could absolutely destroy the income and the livelihoods of artists, people who, paintings or drawings or whatever. This is hurting them. But in other ways, AI can be a wonderful tool. It can be a useful research project.
Mike Papantonio: Let me tell you how dangerous it is for the, I guess the acting economy or the performer economy. There’s already stories. They take 200 people, put ’em in a room and they say, what is it you like about Tom Cruise? Let’s talk about specifics. What do you like about his face? Well, I like his jawline. I like his eyes. Well, what do you like about his voice? I like the way his level of excitement rises and falls. What do you like about his mannerisms? Well, I like the way he turns and uses his hands. And then they take Tom Cruise and they create their own version. Not a Tom Cruise. It won’t be Tom Cruise. It’s gonna be an actor. And then on top of that, they create a storyline. Right? You can take AI, all it does is scrapes 2000 years worth of information. And then it says, you can write an entire screenplay. I’ll tell you who’s gonna get hit on this worse than anybody, even maybe so than the music industry, is going to be the acting industry. It is gonna close down Hollywood. These people that are moving into acting right now, good luck because this is a new replacement. And they’ve already got it fairly sophisticated. If you go online and you take a look at, just do a search on let me see a total AI production, its totally made up. The people are made up. The voices are made up. The plot is made up. You’re gonna see something startling.
Farron Cousins: Right. And that’s the problem here too, because we have seen the AI that you and I could have access to by signing up and making an account. You get pictures with people with either two fingers and then eight fingers over here. A lot of bugs to work out there. But there are far more sophisticated AI models, and that’s the one that they used with the Biden deepfake. They’ve used it for other kinds of deepfakes. They’ve tried to do deepfakes of the Trump assassination attempt. So they, the people with access to these smarter AIs, I guess we’ll call them, they can do real damage in politics because it is almost impossible to distinguish what is real and what is not. As opposed to the ones you see floating around social media that are obviously not real. They don’t have that problem.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I think that, you mentioned the music industry, I think they’re safer than Hollywood because of the original quality. You know, Ed Sheeran, you don’t create an Ed Sheeran. Ed Sheeran is just, he’s an aberration. He comes up and creates this whole niche. Bruce Springsteen, same thing. Until you listen to his early stuff, you say, wow, that’s different. So that’s the problem with AI and music. But AI in Hollywood, it’s gonna shut Hollywood down. I’m telling you, if these people that say, I want to be an actor, buddy, they need to understand what’s going on with AI.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Thanks for joining me.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all the time we have. But all these segments are gonna be posted right here on this channel in the coming week. So make sure you’re subscribed. I’m Mike Papantonio, this has been America’s Lawyer, where we tell you stories every week that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers don’t allow ’em. If they tell the story, the advertisers is gonna pull the money, they’re gonna pull the advertising money, or their political relationships are so strong, it’s so Republican, or it’s so Democrat, they can’t color outside the lines of the talking points for that particular party. We don’t have that problem here in either regard. So hope to see you next time.