Musk’s sharing of the video acquired greater than 128m views, however the lack of labeling to point out it’s manipulated media seems to violate X’s guidelines.
Deepfakes are a rising concern for elections and X proprietor Elon Musk has determined to share certainly one of a US presidential candidate – regardless of his personal platform’s insurance policies.
Musk lately shared a video of a faux marketing campaign video for US vp Kamala Harris, with an AI-generated model of her voice. The video is essential of Harris and US president Joe Biden, with the AI-generated voice referring to Harris as a “deep state puppet” for instance.
The video was initially posted by an X profile known as Mr Reagan, which known as the video a “Kamala Harris marketing campaign advert parody”. Musk shared the video on his personal profile however didn’t present that it was a parody, merely saying “that is superb” with a laughing emoji.
Musk’s put up triggered the quantity of people that noticed the video to surge, Reagan’s put up that labels it as a parody gained greater than 4m views, however Musk’s put up acquired greater than 128m views.
The put up follows experiences that deepfake movies of Harris have surged on platforms like X and TikTok because it was introduced that she could be the Democrat’s candidate within the US presidential election. Musk lately shared his help for Donald Trump for re-election, after the previous US president survived an assassination try throughout a marketing campaign rally.
However Musk’s sharing of a deepfake video criticising Harris additionally seems to be in violation of X’s personal insurance policies on AI-generated content material. The location’s guidelines state {that a} person “could not share artificial, manipulated, or out-of-context media that will deceive or confuse individuals and result in hurt”.
These insurance policies state that if deceptive content material shouldn’t be eliminated, X could present “extra context” on deceptive posts, similar to including a label or a hyperlink to extra explanations or clarifications. On the time of writing, there have been no labels added to Musk’s put up.
Varied X customers have responded with criticism for the dearth of a label, whereas a few of identified the distinction in tone Musk had in 2022 round accounts that had been pretending to be different individuals. On this put up, Musk stated that any account partaking in impersonation with out clearly specifying it’s a parody account could be “completely suspended”.
This isn’t the primary time deepfake content material has been used within the US. Earlier this yr, residents in New Hampshire acquired faux calls from an AI-generated voice of Biden telling them to not vote.
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Elon Musk in 2023. Picture: Simon Walker/No 10 Downing Avenue by way of Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
