TThe newscaster exudes a very creepy air as he delivers partisan and derogatory messages in Mandarin. Taiwan’s outgoing president, Tsai Ing-wen, is as effective as a limp spinach, and her tenure has been plagued by poor economic performance, social problems, and protests.
“water spinach looks at water spinach. The water turns out “Spinach is more than just a name,” the presenter says in an extended metaphor about Tsai. “Hollow Tsai” is a pun related to the Mandarin Chinese word for “Hollow Tsai”.
This is not traditional broadcast journalism, even if the lack of impartiality is no longer shocking. The anchor is generated by an artificial intelligence program and is attempting to influence Taiwan’s presidential election, albeit clumsily.
The source and creator of the video are unknown, but the clip is intended to make voters question Taiwan’s desire to remain at arm’s length from China, which claims it is part of its territory. It is the purpose. This is the latest example of deepfake news, a subgenre of AI-generated disinformation games, by anchors and TV presenters.
Such avatars proliferate on social networks, spreading state-backed propaganda. Experts say this type of video will continue to be popular as the technology becomes more widely available.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect,” said Tyler Williams, director of research at Graphica, a disinformation research firm. “If a user is just scrolling through X or TikTok, they won’t be able to see the small nuances on a small screen.”
The Chinese government is already experimenting with AI-generated news anchors. In 2018, the state-run Xinhua News Agency announced Qiu Hao, a digital news presenter who promised to bring news to viewers “24 hours a day, 365 days a year.” Although the Chinese public is generally keen on using digital avatars in the media, Qiu Hao has been unable to popularize them more widely.
China is at the forefront of the disinformation element in this trend. Last year, a pro-China bot account on Facebook and X distributed an AI-generated deepfake video of a newscaster representing a fictitious station called Wolf News. One video accused the US government of failing to address gun violence, while another highlighted China’s role at an international summit.
Microsoft said in a report released in April that Chinese state-backed cyber groups were targeting Taiwan’s elections with AI-generated disinformation content, including the use of fake news anchors and TV-style presenters. In one clip cited by Microsoft, an AI-generated anchor made unsubstantiated claims about the personal life of the ultimately successful pro-sovereignty candidate, Kiyonori Lai, claiming that he had fathered a child out of wedlock. .
Microsoft said the news anchor was created using CapCut, a video editing tool developed by ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok.
Clint Watts, general manager of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, noted that China officially uses synthetic news anchors in its domestic media market, which has allowed the country to hone the format. So far, it has had little noticeable impact, but it has now become a tool for disinformation.
“The Chinese are much more focused on incorporating AI into their systems, including propaganda and disinformation, and they moved there very quickly. They’re trying everything that’s particularly effective. That’s not true,” Watts said.
Third-party vendors such as CapCut provide the News Anchor format as a template, so it’s easy to adapt and create in bulk.
Source: www.theguardian.com
