Deepfakes in an election year — is Asia ready to handle fake news?

2024 is set up to be the biggest global election year in history. It coincides with the rapid rise in deepfakes. In APAC alone, there was a surge in deepfakes by 1530% from 2022 to 2023, according to a Sumsub report. Fotografielink | Istock | Getty Images Ahead of the Indonesian elections on Feb. 14, … Read more

Elon Musk Pivots From Jews to Pizzagate as Advertisers Flee

If Elon Musk is actively trying to drive advertisers away from his floundering social media site X, then he’s doing a really fantastic job of it. Fresh off spurring a maelstrom of criticism over a tweet that was broadly decried as antisemitic (and which led to an outflux of advertisers), Musk has now decided to … Read more

Sports Illustrated Duped Readers With Fake AI-Created Writers

Update 5:46 PM: Sports Illustrated sent us the following statement. Today, an article was published alleging that Sports Illustrated published AI-generated articles. According to our initial investigation, this is not accurate. The articles in question were product reviews and were licensed content from an external, third-party company, AdVon Commerce. A number of AdVon’s e-commerce articles … Read more

Who’s Responsible for the Gaza Hospital Explosion? Here’s Why It’s Hard to Know What’s Real

“When you see people in such a capacity putting out a claim, walking it back, putting out a video, deleting the video, it makes it tough, not just for us to do our job, but even for the public to find out what’s going on,” Koltai says. The post on Israel’s official account was subsequently … Read more

An Alleged Deepfake of UK Opposition Leader Keir Starmer Shows the Dangers of Fake Audio

As members of the UK’s largest opposition party gathered in Liverpool for their party conference—probably their last before the UK holds a general election—a potentially explosive audio file started circulating on X, formerly known as Twitter. The 25-second recording was posted by an X account with the handle “@Leo_Hutz” that was set up in January … Read more

Generative AI Is the Newest Tool in the Dictator’s Handbook

When protests in Pakistan earlier this year escalated into clashes between pro-government forces and supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, the now-imprisoned leader turned to social media to bolster his message. Khan shared this brief video clip on Twitter showing his supporters holding up signs with his face on them and chanting his name. … Read more

Slovakia’s Election Deepfakes Show AI Is a Danger to Democracy

After a few hours they were ready to confirm that they believed the recording had been altered. Their label, which is still available to see on Slovak-language Facebook when visitors come across the post, says: “Independent fact-checkers say that the photo or image has been edited in a way that could mislead people.” Facebook users … Read more

X Fires Its Election Team Before a Huge Election Year

X, the company formerly known as Twitter, has fired its head of threat intelligence, Aaron Rodericks, and four other members of the team responsible for combating disinformation and misinformation, just months before the US Republican primaries mark the beginning of the 2024 American election cycle—and a year in which more than 50 countries around the … Read more

Chinese language Disinfo Marketing campaign Blames Maui Fires on US Climate Weapon

Researchers say they’ve found 85 social media accounts and blogs originating from China and dealing in tandem to amplify a conspiracy concept claiming the lethal fires in Maui had been brought on by a secretive “climate weapon” unleashed by the US army. NewsGuard, which has beforehand uncovered different on-line affect operations from China and Russia, … Read more

What My Solitary Confinement in Iran Revealed Concerning the Risks of an Remoted Web

5 months into my eight-month solitary confinement and proper earlier than the Persian New 12 months, Nowruz, the guards put me in a brand new cell on the different finish of the Evin jail high-security facility in Tehran. Measuring 3 by 3 meters, it was a lot bigger than my previous cell, which meant I … Read more