Trump posted a fake Taylor Swift image. AI and deepfakes are only going to get worse this election cycle

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Queenie Wong and Wendy Lee | (TNS) Los Angeles Times

The patriotic image shows megastar Taylor Swift dressed up like Uncle Sam, falsely suggesting she endorses Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“Taylor Wants You To Vote For Donald Trump,” the image, which appears to be generated by artificial intelligence, says.

Over the weekend, Trump amplified the lie when he shared the image along with others depicting support from Swift fans to his 7.6 million followers on his social network Truth Social.

Deception has long played a part in politics, but the rise of artificial intelligence tools that allow people to rapidly generate fake images or videos by typing out a phrase adds another complex layer to a familiar problem on social media. Known as deepfakes, these digitally-altered images and videos can make it appear someone is saying or doing something they aren’t.

As the race between Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris intensifies, disinformation experts are sounding the alarm about generative AI’s risks.

“I’m worried as we move closer to the election, this is going to explode,” said Emilio Ferrara, a computer science professor at USC Viterbi School of Engineering. “It’s going to get much worse than it is now.”

Platforms such as Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter, have rules against manipulated images, audio and videos, but they’ve struggled to enforce these policies as AI-generated content floods the internet. Faced with accusations they’re censoring political speech, they’ve focused more on labeling content and fact checking, rather than pulling posts down. And there are exceptions to the rules, such as satire, that allow people to create and share fake images online.

“We have all the problems of the past, all the myths and disagreements and general stupidity, that we’ve been dealing with for 10 years,” said Hany Farid, a UC Berkeley professor who focuses on misinformation and digital forensics. “Now we have it being supercharged with generative AI and we are really, really partisan.”

Amid the surging interest in OpenAI, the maker of popular generative AI tool ChatGPT, tech companies are encouraging people to use new AI tools that can generate text, images and videos.

Farid, who analyzed the Swift images that Trump shared, said they appear to be a mix of both real and fake images, a “devious” way to push out misleading content.

People share fake images for various reasons. They might be doing it to just go viral on social media or troll others. Visual imagery is a powerful part of propaganda, warping people’s views on politics including about the legitimacy of the 2024 presidential election, he said.

On X, images that appear to be AI-generated depict Swift hugging Trump, holding his hand or singing a duet as the Republican strums a guitar. Social media users have also used other methods to falsely claim Swift endorsed Trump.

X labeled one video that falsely claimed Swift endorsed Trump as “manipulated media.” The video, posted in February, uses footage of Swift at the 2024 Grammys and makes it appear as if she’s holding a sign that says, “Trump Won. Democrats Cheated!”

Political campaigns have been bracing for AI’s impact on the election.

Vice President Harris’ campaign has an interdepartmental team “to prepare for the potential effects of AI this election, including the threat of malicious deepfakes,” said spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg in a statement. The campaign only authorizes the use of AI for “productivity tools” such as data analysis, she added.

Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Part of the challenge in curbing fake or manipulated video is that the federal law that guides social media operations doesn’t specifically address deepfakes. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 does not hold social media companies liable for hosting content, as long as they do not aid or control those who posted it.

But over the years, tech companies have come under fire for what’s appeared on their platforms and many social media companies have established content moderation guidelines to address this such as prohibiting hate speech.

“It’s really walking this tightrope for social media companies and online operators,” said Joanna Rosen Forster, a partner at law firm Crowell & Moring.

Legislators are working to address this problem by proposing bills that would require social media companies to take down unauthorized deepfakes.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said in July that he supports legislation that would make altering a person’s voice with the use of AI in a campaign ad illegal. The remarks were a response to a video billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, shared that uses AI to clone Harris’ voice. Musk, who has endorsed Trump, later clarified that the video he shared was parody.

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists is one of the groups advocating for laws addressing deepfakes.

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator, said social media companies are not doing enough to address the problem.

“Misinformation and outright lies spread by deepfakes can never really be rolled back,” Crabtree-Ireland said. “Especially with elections being decided in many cases by narrow margins and through complex, arcane systems like the electoral college, these deepfake-fueled lies can have devastating real world consequences.”

Crabtree-Ireland has experienced the problem firsthand. Last year, he was the subject of a deepfake video circulating on Instagram during a contract ratification campaign. The video, which showed false imagery of Crabtree-Ireland urging members to vote against a contract he negotiated, got tens of thousands of views. And while it had a caption that said “deepfake,” he received dozens of messages from union members asking him about it.

It took several days before Instagram took the deepfake video down, he said.

“It was, I felt, very abusive,” Crabtree-Ireland said. “They shouldn’t steal my voice and face to make a case that I don’t agree with.”

With a tight race between Harris and Trump, it’s not surprising both candidates are leaning on celebrities to appeal to voters. Harris’ campaign embraced pop star Charli XCX’s depiction of the candidate as“brat” and has used popular tunes such as Beyoncé’s “Freedom” and Chappell Roan’s “Femininomenon” to promote the Democratic Black and Asian American female presidential nominee. Musicians Kid RockJason Aldean and Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, have voiced their support for Trump, who was the target of an assassination attempt in July.

Swift, who has been the target of deepfakes before, hasn’t publicly endorsed a candidate in the 2024 presidential election, but she’s criticized Trump in the past. In the 2020 documentary “Miss Americana,” Swift says in a tearful conversation with her parents and team that she regrets not speaking out against Trump during the 2016 election and slams Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn, who was running for U.S. Senate at the time, as “‘Trump in a wig.”

Swift’s publicist, Tree Paine, did not respond to a request for comment.

AI-powered chatbots from platforms such as Meta, X and OpenAI make it easy for people to create fictitious images. While news outlets have found that X’s AI chatbot Grok can generate election fraud images, other chatbots are more restrictive.

Meta AI’s chatbot declined to create images of Swift endorsing Trump.

“I can’t generate images that could be used to spread misinformation or create the impression that a public figure has endorsed a particular political candidate,” Meta AI’s chatbot replied.

Meta and TikTok cited their efforts to label AI-generated content and partner with fact checkers. For example, TikTok said an AI-generated video falsely depicting a political endorsement of a public figure by an individual or group is not allowed. X didn’t respond to a request for comment.

When asked how Truth Social moderates AI-generated content, the platform’s parent company Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. accused journalists of “demanding more censorship.” Truth Social’s community guidelines has rules against posting fraud and spam but doesn’t spell out how it handles AI-generated content.

With social media platforms facing threats of regulation and lawsuits, some misinformation experts are skeptical that social networks want to properly moderate misleading content.

Social networks make most of their money from ads so keeping users on the platforms for a longer time is “good for business,” Farid said.

“What engages people is the absolute, most conspiratorial, hateful, salacious, angry content,” he said. “That’s who we are as human beings.”

It’s a harsh reality that even Swifties won’t be able to shake off.

____

Staff writer Mikael Wood contributed to this report.

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Movie review: ‘Blink Twice’ puts suspense in full view, but no message comes into focus

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In her daring directorial debut, “Blink Twice,” writer/director Zoë Kravitz doesn’t flinch once — not even when her film might be served by looking away. She maintains a steely gaze in this caustic social horror fable, laced with black comedy, which nods to Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” though Kravitz chooses to aim her artistic weapon at sexual politics, not necessarily race. Co-written with E.T. Feigenbaum, “Blink Twice” is a big, bold swing from the actress-turned-filmmaker, even if her message becomes muddled along the way. It’s clear Kravitz wants to make a statement with this film. What’s less clear is what exactly that statement might be.

“Blink Twice” opens with a dead-eyed scroll in a dingy bathroom; our protagonist, Frida (Naomi Ackie), thumbs her phone screen on the toilet catatonically, observing the lives of others on Instagram, before she and her roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat) rush to work, serving champagne and canapés at a swanky gala hosted by a disgraced tech mogul, Slater King (Channing Tatum). Yearning to feel a part of something bigger, the cater waiters slip into slinky gowns and join the party themselves, warmly welcomed into an inner circle of wealthy men as beautiful young women typically are. Jet off to Slater’s private island with his pals? Frida’s been longing for a vacation.

Channing Tatum stars as Slater King in director Zoe Kravitz’s “Blink Twice,” an Amazon MGM Studios film. (Zachary Greenwood/Amazon Content Services LLC/TNS)

Kravitz observes this moneyed milieu well, and what she capably achieves in “Blink Twice” is an absurdist comedy of gendered manners once the guys (Tatum, Simon Rex, Haley Joel Osment, Levon Hawke and Christian Slater) and gals (Ackie, Shawkat, Adria Arjona, Liz Caribel and Trew Mullen) touch down at Slater’s secluded colonial spread located in a lush tropical forest. Outfitted in matching white bikinis and resort wear, the girls are plied with fine wine, fine food and good drugs. The setting and its accoutrements couldn’t be more richly luxurious, but Kravitz presents this world with a sickening, unsettling hyperreality.

Everything feels off in “Blink Twice,” intentionally so. The style is quite jarring, with an abrasiveness that’s almost chafing to watch. The camera angles are strange, the edit jagged, as Kravitz and editor Kathryn J. Schubert construct scenes as if they’re all montage, with seconds and even minutes dropping out. The images created by cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra are saturated, too bright, and have an almost burning lucidity and crispness; the sound design is also overly pronounced and too sharp. This postcard-perfect setting becomes almost unbearable to endure.

It’s a terrible truth to realize that you can have all of the nice things and still be having a bad time. Jess eventually realizes it, after a spree of endless nights spent binging on fun-fun-fun, the girls racing around the lawn in a champagne and psychedelics-induced stupor after their stultifying dinners with the men. Of course something’s not right. They have no phones, no one knows what day it is, and mysterious injuries keep appearing. When Jess goes missing and no one seems to remember she was even there, it’s up to Frida to claw her way out of the fog and find out what happened to her best friend.

Kravitz nails the social analysis and the dark, satirical tone, but as the film becomes a horror/suspense thriller, her directorial execution falters. There are some dynamic shots and compositions, and overt references to her inspirations, but the element of suspense and her ability to stage a horror sequence is lacking. She doesn’t shy away from the ugly truth at the center of her story, but Kravitz miscalculates the careful calibration of “conceal” vs. “reveal” that is necessary in horror filmmaking, making the mistake of showing us the monster clearly, forgetting that what the audience can’t see is far scarier than what they can.

Despite its flaws, what Kravitz demonstrates with “Blink Twice” is a directorial vision bursting with creative, audacious choices, at least cinematically (narratively, the script is riddled with ideas that are rather facile and preposterous). It’s a fine first effort, and she pulls fantastic performances out of Ackie, Arjona and especially Tatum, his quiet, seductive menace boiling over impressively.

However, Kravitz never works out exactly what she wants to say about sex, power and revenge. A deeply cynical coda at the end of the film undercuts any “empowerment” themes that might naturally emerge from this story. Successfully blending righteous rage, sardonic humor and a fist-pumping “girl power” narrative is quite a challenging task, if that’s even what she wants to do (it remains a mystery). Ultimately, there’s a certain emotion and earnestness missing from “Blink Twice” that would undergird this entire endeavor and keep it from feeling so hollow. But the unrelenting cynicism robs the film of any impactful meaning. Maybe that’s the point, but it doesn’t feel good.

‘Blink Twice’

2 1/2 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for strong violent content, sexual assault, drug use and language throughout, and some sexual references)
Running time: 1:42
Where to watch: in theaters Friday

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Source: Vikings signing former Gophers star running back Mo Ibrahim

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Mo Ibrahim is coming home.

A source confirmed to the Pioneer Press on Thursday afternoon that the Vikings are planning to sign the former Gophers star running back who rushed for 4668 yards and 53 touchdown during his prolific career in Dinkytown.

This is the second stop for Ibrahim after not being selected in the 2023 NFL Draft. He originally signed with the Detroit Lions as an undrafted free agent before being placed on injured reserve.

This is a cool moment for Ibrahim, even if he’s being brought in mostly to serve as an extra body late in training camp. He will likely suit up for the Vikings in the preseason finale against the Eagles this weekend. If he performs well, Ibrahim could earn a spot on the practice squad.

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Your audience is filled with Republicans. The Democratic convention is underway. How to cover it?

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By DAVID BAUDER AP Media Writer

The Democratic convention presents Fox News Channel with a delicate challenge: how to cover a party suddenly enthused about its election chances when much of the network’s audience has a different political viewpoint.

During the Democrats’ first two days, Fox personalities called the proceedings “boring” and filled with “a lot of hate.” There was a focus on demonstrations outside the arena while many of the speakers inside went unheard on the air. Presidential nominee Kamala Harris was given nicknames like “the princess” and “comrade Kamala.”

“We’re at the DNC,” Sean Hannity quipped, “so you don’t have to be.”

Fox’s telecast illustrated the challenges inherent in covering news events on networks that are filled with both breaking news and partisan political talk, sometimes mashed up — where opinion personalities like Hannity, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and CNN’s Van Jones freely mix with reporters and blur boundaries. During the GOP convention last month, the liberal-leaning MSNBC cut off Nikki Haley in favor of a discussion about how she debased herself, and ignored Ron DeSantis entirely.

The feel-good Republican gathering gave Fox News the biggest convention audience ever for a cable network, a feat at a time when millions of Americans are pulling the plug on subscriptions, and a staggering audience of 10.4 million people for the opening moments of former President Donald Trump’s acceptance speech, the Nielsen company said.

No one expects such numbers this week for Fox, where roughly two-thirds of the audience in a 2024 Nielsen/MRI study called themselves Republican. Fox’s audience has shown a marked tendency to tune away from news that doesn’t reflect its beliefs, such as the Jan. 6 committee hearings.

Fox had 2.5 million viewers for Monday’s DNC coverage, 1.7 million on Tuesday — the latter sixth among networks covering it. Fox was the most-watched network for both of the first two nights of the GOP session a month ago, with 6.9 million on opening night and 5.4 million on the second night.

Not mincing words

Hosts on “The Five,” Fox’s most-watched show, were nothing if not direct in setting the stage for the Democrats’ week. “You can’t believe anything the Democrats tell you,” Jesse Watters said. “Everything is a lie. … There is no joy here. The only joy is that Joe’s gone.”

Watters said “no one believes” that the economy is good, or that polls showing Harris rapidly making up ground against Trump since replacing Biden at the top of the ticket are real. Later Monday evening, Watters declared the event boring, saying “this is like a convention your boss makes you go to.” Hannity described the convention as “far-left radical protesters outside and manufactured unity, deception and lying inside.”

Fox hosts uniformly rejected the Democrats’ interpretation that Biden had committed a selfless act by giving up his reelection bid and called the president’s appearance on Monday more humiliating than valedictory. “You had to wrestle this job away from him like it was car keys from a drunk,” said Greg Gutfeld, who called former President Barack Obama the “Barack-stabber.”

Harris was depicted as an inexperienced, risky choice. Onscreen messages, or chyrons, during Laura Ingraham’s show drove home the point: “Dems Overconfident in Their Unproven Backup,” read one. Others: “Kamala’s All Vibe, No Substance” and “Comrade Kamala Fails Econ 101.”

“This is like booking tickets on the Titanic,” analyst Keith Kellogg said.

During most of Hannity’s show on Tuesday, an onscreen camera was focused on a nonviolent protest outside of the convention. “The convention has been full of a lot of hate,” Hannity said, “instead of the politics of joy, which you’ve been promised.”

Who made it and who didn’t

Fox News has made room for Democrats willing to come on its shows this week for interviews, including Harris campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingel and U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly. Fox said it has seen a 40% increase in bookings of Democrats compared with last year, and that its sister business network presents full coverage of convention speeches.

Fox says it has the same footprint on the ground for the DNC in Chicago as it did for the Republican convention in Chicago last month. It rejects the notion that it is unwilling to show the Democrats’ point of view.

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Fox carried Biden’s speech in its entirety Monday night, as well as some other moments including Harris’ short, surprise address, which occurred during Hannity’s show. Both Barack and Michelle Obama were carried on Tuesday night. Speeches by Hillary Clinton and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — both deeply unpopular with many in Fox’s audience — were also carried in full. Fox’s Dana Perino said Ocasio-Cortez made a great speech, “but it didn’t make any sense.”

Fox anchor Bret Baier praised both Obamas, saying the former first lady “had an amazing speech that got this crowd on their feet.” Lawrence Jones, “Fox & Friends” co-host, said Wednesday that “no matter how inspirational they are, no matter how good the cadence is on the stage, you can’t dip BS in gold and expect the American people to buy it.”

Several podium appearances covered elsewhere went unheard on Fox News Channel: Olympics basketball coach Steve Kerr, UAW President Shawn Fain, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth. Fox analyst Brit Hume complained that a group of women who talked about abortion policy did Biden a disservice by going on too long — even though the network did not follow their remarks.

Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the conservative Media Research Center, said Fox programs to its audience in much the same way that Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow say they won’t show Trump because of concerns that he’ll lie, “but it’s because they don’t want to watch it.”

Brian Stelter, author of “Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump and the Battle for American Democracy,” said that while Fox News Channel recognized the news importance of the convention, he saw it as reluctant to give its viewers an unvarnished view of what was being said.

“Fox did very little listening and a lot of talking,” he said.

Interestingly, there was an effort by the campaigns Monday to reach beyond friendly territory: The Harris campaign ran a commercial on Fox, while Trump advertised on CNN.

Fox has been particularly sensitive about not threatening audience loyalty. Concerns about its audience’s anger with Fox following coverage of the 2020 presidential election were cited in evidence presented by Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation suit against Fox. That suit was settled when Fox agreed to pay $787 million.