The AI bomb is about to explode

And so it begins.

Since at least 2016, and really starting far earlier than that, we've been in the middle of an information war. Truth vs lies, real news vs fake news, actual facts vs "alternative facts." And while everyone now has their version of "truth" they can pull out of their hip pockets to win an online argument [1], some are truthier than others.

For example: The 2020 election was not rigged. Climate change is real. Vaccines do not allow Bill Gates to track your bowel movements. George Soros is not is hiding in the jacaranda outside your bedroom window, secretly taking notes. And I don't know what you would call that fungus growing on the top of IQ45's head, but it's definitely not human hair.

Now there's a new weapon being deployed in the information war: Deep fakes. I and many others have been warning that these would play a critical role in the 2024 election cycle. Now they're here, and nobody has a good plan for how to combat them.

ICYMI: Fake it til you break it (democracy, that is)

Take, for example, that audio deep fake of Biden that robo-called Democratic voters, urging them to stay home during the New Hampshire primary. (It even used the word "malarkey," which is kind of ironic when you think about it.) It was created using a tool made by a voice AI company called ElevenLabs, which then suspended the person who made it [2], but not before unknown thousands of people heard it.

Voice recordings are both much easier to fake and harder for normal humans to detect than, say, a video of Biden saying the same thing. (At least, for now.) There are far fewer clues for our brains to latch onto, and call quality has degraded so much in the cell phone era that sometimes it's hard to tell who's even talking. And while voice-analysis company Pindrop quickly flagged it as a fake, and even determined what tool was used to create it, that doesn't mean your aging Aunt Agatha in Dixville Notch [3] got that news flash.

In this case it didn't work; Biden still got 75 percent of the vote, and he wasn't even officially running. Maybe he would have gotten 80 percent without it. But you can be sure it's not the last Biden fake we'll hear about over the next 10 months.

Twitter Taylor Soldier Spy

The second bit of deep fake news that everyone now knows about involves Taylor Swift. It seems somebody got the bright idea to use AI to generate fake pornographic images of Tay Tay and butter them all over Xitter. One image of Taylor was up for 17 hours, viewed more than 45 million times, and reposted by others 24,000 times before Xitter got around to removing that account. Having gutted its trust and safety teams, Elon had no way to deal with the flood except by turning off all searches for "Taylor Swift." Nice work, Space Karen.

While Taylor Swift has long been a favorite target for fake porn, this attack feels political. Despite having not endorsed any political candidates in this election cycle [4], she's already earned the ire of the Wrong Wing. Nothing like a strong, independent, wildly successful woman to get under the skin of the incel crowd. Apparently Swift, Travis Kelce, and George Soros are in cahoots to ensure that the Chiefs win the Super Bowl and Joe Biden wins the election:

Per Rolling Stone:

Far-right influencer Rogan O’Handley went so far as to suggest that if the Chiefs won the Super Bowl, Swift and Kelce would trigger an apocalyptic chain of events that would kill millions. “You MUST defeat the Chiefs,” O’Handley wrote in an X post addressed to the San Francisco 49ers. “If you don’t, Mr. Pfizer and his girlfriend are going to tour the country as ‘world champions’ helping elect Joe Biden WW3 will likely follow in a 2nd Biden term and millions will die. The fate of the free world rests upon your shoulders” [5]

In this case, the deepfakes are not about manipulation; they're about retaliation and intimidation. The message is clear: If you do or say something they don't like, they'll come after you. But if there's any group that you really do not want to piss off, it's the Swifties. Fortunately, the people who generated and spread these images are as dumb as a box of rocks.

ICYMI: You come for Taylor Swift, you best not miss

Take this clown, for example. Zubear Abdi Aka was apparently was one of the first Xitter users to share the Taylor fakes, thinking that his oh-so-clever pseudonym would protect him. The Swifties outed him in milliseconds.

Turns out he's a Somali living in Toronto, he's 28, and five foot eight inches tall. There's other information available about him online, if you want to find it. Doxxing (revealing people's private information to incite other people to harass them) is not cool; if you condone it for your enemies, you also condone it for your allies. On the other hand, in Canada, it’s illegal to distribute intimate images of others without their permission. [6] So, if you wanted to alert the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as to Mr. Aka's particulars, you'd be doing a public service. I'm sure this guy would jump right on it.

The fakers next time

Not everyone who weaponizes AI is going to be this dumb. I am sure at this moment there are hostile nation state actors plotting the best time to launch a deep fake attack on Biden (I can't imagine they'd be ginning one up against his opponent) or anyone who publicly supports him. The best time to sow chaos would be right before election day, when the gap between the deep fake and public exposure as such could be just enough to throw some votes in the wrong direction.

I mean, I was totally willing to believe the Pope was wearing a puffy white coat. His Holiness looked damned good in it, too.

Do deep fakes worry you? Share your angst in the comments below.

[1] There is no winning an online argument. There is only persistence, irritation, exhaustion, and eventual surrender.

[2] Voter suppression is a federal crime, so I suspect that this suspension is just the first thing that will happen to this person. And maybe we'll find out who it is. I have $50 on someone whose name rhymes with Bean Pullups.

[3] Poor Dixville Notch. Imagine the endless penis jokes the four people who live there must have to endure.

[4] In 2020, she endorsed Joe Biden. She also opposed Tennessee republican Marsha Blackburn in 2018, prompting one right winger to proclaim "Taylor Swift just ended her career." How'd that turn out, Einstein?

[5] Imagine being on Team MAGA and having to choose between rooting for the Swifties & the Vaxxers vs the Commies & the Gays. Their heads will explode. Fortunately for people nearby, there’s nothing inside but confetti.

[6] Canadian law (or American law for that matter) does not address whether a deep fake of someone violates anti-revenge porn laws. But why the hell shouldn't it?