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Let's have another one about AI, this time about deepfakes. A picture of a somalian politician speaking in front of an upside down American flag was circulating on Twitter. Fortunately, we had a helpful journalist investigate, and debunk the image as a deepfake. The politician's staff helpfully provided the real image.
Only one problem. The original image circulating on Twitter was real. And the image provided by the politician herself was the fake.
As of right now, the politician's own Twitter is still linking to the now-retracted article, which used the deepfake that she herself provided.
I think the most shocking thing here is that a "journalist" had both the real and fake images in front of her, didn't even take the smallest steps to verify the authenticity of either image. Did she just assume that a politician wouldn't just ... lie ... and simply felt like the authority was enough to come to a conclusion? I think this forum already knows, but journalistic integrity has fallen so far that this laughably bad deepfake is just passed off as true because someone said so. Once deepfakes get more convincing (I had the latest nano banana try generating a similar deepfake and it was basically flawless), we're going to have to stop trusting the papers and our lying eyes too.
The other thing is that this is some seriously insane level of chutzpah here. Who is going to see a real image circulating around, then call the real image a deepfake, then provide their own deepfake as the supposed "real" image as "proof"? It's so farfetched that I'm surprised anyone would think this harebrained plot would work. Yet somehow it did and was regurgitated in other outlets including our favourite Axios.
This also shows that a politician can just pants on fire lie now with zero consequences. Not like trump level off the cuff stupid lies, but lie about what literally just happened at an event that dozens of people attended, with a multitude of official and unofficial videos and photos posted on multiple social media platforms, including the politician's own Facebook page. To point to a completely authentic image and just lie and call it fake. The gaslighting is off the charts. She can post "This never happened here's "proof"", while the video evidence is RIGHT THERE, posted on literally the same Facebook page, and people will eat it up.
In the comments sections and Twitter (stupid places I know) they are somehow still arguing that the evil nazis are somehow still the bad guys in this situation.
Anyways I suspect that once activists figure out on a wide scale what they can get away with on deepfakes with zero consequences, and how bad people are at noticing them, things are going to get really messy really fast.
(I don't want this to be about a left/right thing, I want to talk about ai and fact checking and whatever please)
I'm confused by the whole thing. Is the flag upside down to signal some kind of danger from Trump? If yes, it seems weird to not own up to it.
Was it just incompetence on someone's part of how to fly a flag? Ok, I get wanting to hide that.
Was it sabotage from someone at the venue, and no one realized it was a problem in the moment?
From the description I thought she was standing in front of a completely spread open obviously upside down flag, which would have been quite the statement. This, I didn't even notice it was upside down since it's curled up? I see it now that I'm looking for it.
It seems much easier to believe everyone's just retarded with the hanging it wrong and then trying to cover it with a deepfake and then being too embarrassed to admit it.
I mean, not noticing what direction a furled flag is in seems understandable.
The American flag, at least, is prominently blue on top with white stars when hung on a vertical pole like this. Flipping it would make the top section red-and-white striped, and look IMO completely wrong.
Depends how it’s furled- thé blue could easily be completely hidden.
Unless you attach the outer end to the pole, or use some unusually stiff cloth, it will partially unwrap like you see in the example here. But not impossible, I suppose.
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