🏄 Politicians must declare AI use

Apple spending millions on AI, Elon Musk's struggle with AI

Author

Marc Csuzi
September 07, 2023

Hello Surfers🏄! 

Ahh, the US Elections — or as Google calls them, 'fun times.' With ad spending skyrocketing, it's like an early Christmas for Big Tech companies. While they happily allow parties to spread misinformation through their ad platforms, Google will now slap a 'made with AI' sticker on ads, if applicable.

Here’s your one minute of AI news:

ONE PIECE OF NEWS

Politicians must declare AI use in ads on Google’s platforms

In mid-June, a campaign video released by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis featured images of Donald Trump hugging former coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci. That didn't happen in reality... it was conjured up from the vast realms of AI. Meanwhile, in Europe, a Polish opposition party acknowledged that it had generated the voice of the country's prime minister in one of its political ads.

Screenshot from the Ron DeSantis ad - Weird hands are telling signs

In response, Google announced new policies around the use of generative AI in political advertisements. The company already bans deepfakes intended to deceive voters. However, the new rules will require disclosure of any synthetic content used beyond minor edits, and politicians will have to label ads containing AI-generated media.

With tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT churning out ultra-real images and text, it’s getting hard to tell what’s real and what’s not; this can have a profound effect on elections. Google, Meta, and X face pressure to curb misinformation given their large advertising platforms, but it remains yet to be seen whether Meta and X implement a similar generative AI policy.

The new rules only regulate political ads, not regular YouTube videos.

The policy changes take effect in November, a year from the next US election.

With generative AI getting so good at mimicking, shadier tactics like defamation campaigns are becoming easier to pull off as well. In Taiwan, a presidential candidate’s voice recording was sent to media outlets, where he speaks about his opponent bribing supporters. Investigators allegedly used deepfake detection software and found that the recording is likely fake, but it underscores the growing challenge of trusting recordings.

ONE IDEA

With AI coming, I’m sort of wondering whether it’s worth spending that much time thinking about Twitter.

Sure, I could probably make it the biggest financial institution in the world. But I have only so many brain cycles and hours in the day. I mean, it’s not like I need to be richer or something.

Elon Musk on AI - from the excerpt of his upcoming biography book

⌚ If you have one more minute:

  • Tencent releases AI model for businesses as competition in China heats up

  • Apple is spending ‘millions of dollars a day’ training AI

  • Inside Elon Musk's Struggle for the Future of AI

  • The AI Drake ‘Ghostwriter’ is back with a new song and is chasing a Grammy

  • AI may hold a key to the preservation of the Amazon rainforest

AI Art of the day 🎨

A collection of photo-realistic images made with Stable Diffusion SDXL by u/no_witty_username. Could you tell these were AI generated?

🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄🌊🏄

That’s it folks!

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