Kari Lake has demanded a new media website removes ‘unauthorized’ deep-fake videos of her – and threatened to sue them if they don’t. Nascent news site the Arizona Agenda recently published a creepily realistic AI-generated video of the Republican Senate hopeful appearing to promote them while praising journalists. Former gubernatorial candidate Lake is a staunch supporter of former president Donald Trump . She has denied she lost the 2020 governor’s race and has long blasted the media.
Founded by former NYT journalist Hank Stephenson, the Arizona Agenda created the clips of Lake not only as promotional material, but to highlight the danger AI-generated videos pose for the November election. Lake’s attorney Derek H Ross sent a cease-and-desist letter to Stephenson, demanding the ‘immediate removal’ of the videos. ‘It has come to our attention that your organization, Arizona Agenda, has been utilizing Kari Lake’s name, image, and likeness without her consent in order to generate commercial business for yourself,’ the letter reads.
‘This unauthorized use of Kari Lake’s intellectual property is a violation of her right to control the commercial use of her name, image, and likeness. ‘Such unauthorized use can, and indeed appears to be intended to, mislead the public that Kari Lake is associated with or endorses your organization.’ This cease-and-desist letter serves as formal notice that our clients demand the immediate removal of the aforementioned deep fake videos from all platforms where they have been shared or disseminated,’ the letter adds.
‘Additionally, we demand that Arizona Agenda cease and desist from creating, publishing, or distributing any further deep fake content featuring Kari Lake, or any other content that misrepresents her in any way.’ The letter reminds the Arizona Agenda editors that unauthorized use of someone’s likeness for commercial purposes is ‘strictly prohibited under Arizona law’. ‘Moreover, the dissemination of false information with the intent to harm an individual’s reputation constitutes defamation and is subject to legal action,’ the letter warns.
Lake’s lawyer adds that if the deep-fakes are not removed within 24 hours they will ‘have no choice but to pursue all available legal remedies’. Deep-fakes are AI-generated media that mimic human voices, images, and videos that can be mistaken as real. In his article, Stephenson initially introduces the deep-fake as a real video, claiming that ‘to our great surprise’, despite being ‘a frequent subject of our derision’, Lake ‘offered to film a testimonial about how much she likes the Arizona Agenda .’ But the article soon reveals that all is not as it seems. ‘Did you realize this video is fake?’ The AI-Lake asks. ‘Well in the next six months this technology will get a lot better. By the time the November election rolls around you’ll hardly be able to tell the difference between reality and artificial intelligence.’
Lake’s slightly out-of-sync lip movements are the tell-tale sign – but in a post-pandemic era where Zoom interviews often create this effect anyway, it’s not a definite red flag. In fact, one video even notes that the mouth movement seems off and it doesn’t quite sync up. ‘Around the little boundaries of my face you almost see the glitches in the matrix,’ the AI-Lake states. Stephenson goes on to warn that since the technology is advancing at break-neck speed, ‘this is only the beginning.’ ‘The 2024 election is going to be the first in history where any idiot with a computer can create convincing videos depicting fake events of global importance and publish them to the world in a matter of minutes,’ the article states.
The article notes the audio is pretty close to her voice and hard to tell a difference. The video of her face though isn’t as far along, making the AI easy to spot with a close eye. ‘So what did you think?’ Stephenson’s article posits to readers. ‘At what point did you get it? Did you realize before you clicked because the setup was just so implausible? ‘At least, did you spot it before she told you? Or – like most people that we’ve shown this to – did it take a second for your brain to catch up even after our Deep Fake Kari Lake told you she was fake?’ The site also notes that they made the video using ‘zero dollars’ and asked a software engineer to give up a few hours to make the videos. Stephenson told the Washington Post the article serves as a warning about the ‘scary’ potential for increasingly-realistic fake videos to proliferate – leaving voters baffled about what to believe.
‘When we started doing this, I thought it was going to be so bad it wouldn’t trick anyone, but I was blown away,’ Stephenson told the newspaper. ‘And we are unsophisticated. If we can do this, then anyone with a real budget can do a good enough job that it’ll trick you, it’ll trick me, and that is scary.’ Stephenson said the Arizona Agenda is ‘here to help’ break through through the convincing fakes which ‘keep election officials, cybersecurity experts and national security officers up at night’. AI is already frequently used to muddy the political waters. Just two weeks ago, former President Donald Trump accused congressional Democrats of using AI in a video collection of gaffes and verbal slips.
Played at a House hearing with Special Counsel Robert Hur , the video showed clips of Trump confusing the names of the heads of Hungary and Turkey, slurring his words, and mixing up Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley . Trump’s claim that Democratic staff used Artificial Intelligence technology or that the White House was involved in the video in any way. Meanwhile, MAGA supporters actually did use AI to create images of Trump being embraced by black people, a demographic Republicans continue to struggle to court. A shocking report from the BBC ‘s Panorama showed at one least prominent Trump supporter, Florida-based radio host Mark Kaye, admit to creating the fake image.
An attack ad released by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ‘ since-abandoned presidential campaign also used AI-generated images of former President Donald Trump hugging Dr. Anthony Fauci . The fake images showed Trump hugging and kissing Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who became synonymous with the U.S.’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 400 AI experts, celebrities, politicians, and activists have sounded the alarm about deep-fake technology in an open letter to lawmakers.
They argued that the growing number of AI-generated videos are a threat to society due to the involvement of sexual images, child pornography, fraud, and political disinformation. The letter states that deep-fake technology is misleading the public, making it harder to discern what is real on the internet, and therefore, is more important than ever to implement formalized laws ‘to protect our ability to recognize real human beings.’ Calls for more stringent regulations come after sexually explicit deepfake images of Taylor Swift went viral on social media last month. Read the full story: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13237525/Kari-Lake-demands-leftist-political-site-unauthorized-AI-generated-videos-Republican-candidate-threatens-SUE-refuse.html?ito=msngallery
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