In 2016, the most widely circulated news story was Pope Francis’s support for Donald Trump. There have been many scientific studies on this subject, because this news was fake news. After these elections, experts began to realize that a brutal election campaign on social media platforms could turn into its opposite: instead of becoming an opportunity for voters to learn about the candidates’ opinions, it could turn into a festival of misinformation.
Elon Musk published a deepfake attacking Kamala Harris
Although the 2024 US election campaign is just beginning, it is already clear that what experts warned against eight years ago is just a fraction of the reality we may be dealing with now.
It all started with Elon Musk, who, shortly after Kamala Harris announced her willingness to run for president after Joe Biden’s resignation, posted a short video on his website X (formerly Twitter) that looked like an advertisement for Harris. We heard her voice, we saw some of her statements. The problem is that the film was intended to completely ridicule her, and the real, out-of-context phrases served to illustrate the narrative that Harris is incompetent and unfit for office. Musk initially failed to inform users that the video was a deepfake, that is, a video created with artificial intelligence that generates a voice identical to Harris’s real voice, except that these were not her words, but the creator of the material put them in her mouth. Of course, an experienced viewer could realize that it was a fake film, but the problem is that the line between satire and reality, especially on the Internet, is extremely arbitrary. Musk defended himself by saying that freedom of speech also means freedom for satire, but that’s a weak defense in an age when satire is just one step away from misinformation.
Donald Trump posts AI graphics attacking Kamala Harris and suggesting Taylor Swift endorsed him
In August, Elon Musk decided to increase traffic to his X website by personally conducting a special interview with Donald Trump, who, thanks to this, started publishing his posts on X again. And Trump has proven many times that he does not distinguish the difference between campaigning and disinformation. So, on Sunday, he posted a photo on X that showed Kamala Harris speaking in Chicago. But not to representatives of the Democratic Party, but to… the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The audience waved red flags, and in front of the vice president there was a large red banner with a hammer and sickle.
