“My fellow Americans, an hour ago I learned that Russia had begun preparing its nuclear arsenal. I immediately ordered the United States’ armed forces to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Seconds ago I was told that Russia has launched a counterstrike at the continental US. We anticipate that many of these missiles will reach their targets. Make peace with God and your family. God bless America.” The voice is that of US president Donald Trump, reshaped by artificial intelligence software to pronounce a pre-written script. A data scientist with two hours of recorded Trump speech processed it through an algorithm. The chilling announcement, reminiscent of Orson Welles’s 1938 radio broadcast about an invasion of earth by Martians, was played on Monday at the Paris Peace Forum to show the challenge faced by the newly formed Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity.
“A deep fake video animates a person’s face and adds a voice track, to make a leader or a celebrity say whatever one wants,” the former Danish prime minister and former secretary general of Nato, Anders Rasmussen, explained to the Anglo-American Press Association on the sidelines of the peace forum.
“Currently you need sophisticated editing skills, a voice actor . . . But we estimate within two years it will be possible to create videos from the comfort of a living room, using computers to animate the face and replicate the voice . . . Artificial intelligence could make interference tactics available to anyone with just a bit of technological knowledge,” Rasmussen said.
Rasmussen founded the commission earlier this year with Michael Chertoff, who was George W Bush’s secretary of homeland security from 2005 until 2009. Their goal is to raise awareness of foreign – mainly Russian – meddling in elections in western democracies, and to promote preventative measures.
Full Article: Election meddling to become more sophisticated, forum hears.