A bad video made using artificial intelligence falsified my image and it has bothered me since it happened late last year.
The authors used my Brief du Jour videos to create a fake version of one of them. Their objective was quite clear. They were trying to stir up hatred against refugees in Europe. The video was riddled with lies about Ukrainian refugees, in particular, and had a far-right overtone, aimed at making Europeans more fearful and hateful towards them. They made me say all kinds of crazy things.
I don’t know who did this, of course, but I suspect it was someone who supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – someone who is trying to denigrate Ukrainians in the eyes of the citizens of Ukraine. ‘EU and disrupt the EU’s sympathy for Ukrainians and Ukraine in general, perhaps.
The video quality is not very good. Yes, it looks like I’m making one of my daily videos, but my accent is weird, the lip sync is off, and the message is hateful, inflammatory and ridiculous.
That is to say, it is ridiculous for anyone who knows me, knows my Brief du Jour or Human Rights Watch.
Those who know me and my organization know that we are not going to denigrate refugees or spout far-right hatred. I mean, really, it’s just insane.
Yet, thousands of people watched the fake videoand it’s a safe bet that few people will be able to tell the difference, especially since the video was posted in far-right circles, where authentic Human Rights Watch content probably doesn’t have much traction. scope.
This is the first time this has happened to me, but it is not a first for HRW in general. Our video work has been misused before. As our regular readers and followers should know, if anyone has any doubt about the authenticity of an HRW post or video, they can always consult our website, and more particularly the archive pages of the Brief of the Day.
-I’ve been thinking about this incident over the past month trying to understand what it means.
First of all, forget “ imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… “, as Oscar Wilde said (or copied from someone else). These are far-right people who use HRW’s brand and people who generally hate HRW because we say things like refugees are human beings and have rights.
Still, it says a lot about the power and respect HRW enjoys, even among people who don’t like us.
But it’s scary and it bothers me.
Honestly, I suspected that something like this would eventually happen to the Brief du Jour. With all this video content available online, I figured that one day someone would introduce it to AI for their own purposes. It happened sooner than I expected.
The use of AI is spreading rapidly. Its impact can compromise our words. I thought I was prepared for this to happen to me. This was not the case.
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