YouTube has suspended five accounts that spread artificial intelligence (AI)-related disinformation related to the Venezuelan government.
House of News videos have received hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube and have also been broadcast by state broadcasters. However, both ads were fake: the hosts were created using avatar technology from London-based Synthesia, which has raised $66 million from Silicon Valley investors. The American accents of the presenters were synthesized, the speaking faces were generated by machine learning algorithms.
Adrián González, director of the disinformation monitoring agency Cazadores de Fake News, based in the Venezuelan capital Caracas, notes that “disinformation can flourish in Venezuela’s information desert” due to the extensive propaganda media network. The Financial Times notes that this raises concerns due to the impact of AI-generated information fakes on the population, whose access to alternative sources of information is limited by state censorship.
https://www.ft.com/content/3a2b3d54-0954-443e-adef-073a4831cdbd
