United States: an election under AInew opus of the documentary series The factory of lies, broadcast this Sunday, November 3 at 9:10 p.m. on France 5 , is interested in generative artificial intelligence, which makes it possible to create a multitude of content at low cost and in a very short time. And which constitutes an additional threat to an already very eventful American presidential election. Interview with director Elsa Guiol.
How did you choose the theme?
HAS The Lie Factorywe had already produced two episodes around the American elections. We therefore saw the arrival of generative artificial intelligence tools, capable of creating new content from pre-existing data. But when we saw the scale they were beginning to take on in the campaign, it seemed important to us to talk about them without delay. We have known for a while that AI can be a very powerful disinformation tool. The United States is not the first country to use it for political purposes, but the threat there continues to grow. Today, the slightest event gives rise to a flood of AI-generated images on social networks, which is quite worrying.
How did your investigation go?
I spent about a month, a month and a half confirming the angle, finding characters… It was quite complicated, as a foreign media outlet, to reach witnesses in the United States. But I managed it. I then stayed there for about fifteen days. I also shot some sequences in Paris. Then began the assembly phase which lasted two months. As there were lots of twists and turns during the summer, we made a lot of little additions. But at some point, it was necessary to put an end to it. We therefore decided to end with the sequence on Elon Musk, who uses Twitter, which he owns, to publish deep fakes (Editor’s note, these increasingly realistic digital manipulations) on Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Did your various witnesses readily agree to speak?
As surprising as it may seem, the representatives of Donald Trump's “digital army” were not very difficult to convince. They were even quite available and transparent. It must be said that I did not address the big names in his administration either. And that there is nothing illegal about these practices today. This is also the danger.
What interested you the most during your investigation?
The ease with which these false images are created! You don't have to be an IT professional to make anyone say anything. We can all get there in just a few clicks. In video, the software is still not very strong, but in audio, the result is fascinating. As part of the documentary, someone was asked to make a sound of the singer Taylor Swift with software accessible to everyone. The rendering is so similar that it becomes very difficult to disentangle the real from the fake. I could have fallen into the trap myself. I therefore invite everyone to be extra vigilant, to be wary and to be very careful about what they share on social networks. We must also teach our children to question the content that is circulating. As much as the younger generations master the uses of these technologies much better than us, they do not always know the dangers.
France 521 h 10.
