Political deepfakes
Language Log 2024-09-23
Daysia Tolentino, "Trump shares fake photo of Harris with Diddy in now-deleted Truth Social post", NBC News 9/20/2024:
Amid the recent news of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ arrest, former President Donald Trump reposted a doctored image falsely showing Vice President Kamala Harris with Combs with text questioning if she was involved in his alleged “freak offs.”
The image, which Trump reposted to his Truth Social profile, is an edited version of a 2001 photo of Harris with former talk show host Montel Williams, whom she briefly dated, and his daughter Ashley. The edit replaced Montel Williams’ face with a photo of Combs.
This is not the first time the Republican presidential nominee has posted a fake image in an effort to bolster his campaign. Trump has posted several AI-generated images, including some falsely depicting Taylor Swift and her fans endorsing him, and one of Harris speaking to a crowd of communists in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention.
Thanks to the Trump's Truth archive, here's the now-deleted faked picture of Harris with Combs:
…and the post with the faked "Swifties for Trump" pictures:
Here's an image of the (more obviously faked) picture showing Harris addressing communists, from X-formerly-Twitter:
The potential for this sort of thing is further exemplified by the "exploding goats" video — Jordan Liles, "Exploding Goats? Fake CNN Video Claimed Israel Targeted Hezbollah with Bizarre New Strategy", Snopes 9/20/2024:
A rumor circulating online in September 2024 claimed a video showed CNN anchor Jake Tapper reporting that Israel targeted Hezbollah — a Shiite Muslim political party and militant group based in Lebanon — with exploding goats. […]
However, the video clip was fake. CNN never ran any such report. Stand-up comedian, actor and writer Danny Polishchuk created the video as a gag. He also played the role of the field reporter opposite Tapper. Polishchuk engineered Tapper's mouth movements and vocal sounds with deepfake video technology and artificial-intelligence tools.
The video is quite well done — a step forward from last year's "Failure to Launch" — though the silly content means that most people would be skeptical:
BREAKING NEWS:
Mass Hezbollah Casualties Reported After Goats Rectums Explode.
— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) September 20, 2024
A less absurd deepfake of similar (or better!) quality could go very far before being debunked.