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Deepfake of the Week

AI and disinformation experts spent the last few years warning the world that a viral deepfake shared on social media would one day cause a material impact on financial markets.

That day was Monday, when the above photo of an explosion near the Pentagon was shared on twitter by verified (read: paid blue check mark) accounts as “real” and seen by millions of users. This caused a small flash crash, with a temporary loss of billions across financial markets due to the perceived fear of an attack on American soil.

What does Reality Defender's platform say?

Our platform found the image to have an over 99% probability of being a deepfake. Doing this with the naked eye is nearly impossible, but if you look close enough, the railing has inconsistencies and even floats on the sidewalk, while the smoke is overly smooth compared to the building behind it. AI analysis found artifacts throughout the image that were in line with diffusion-based generated images.

What does the Reality Defender team say?

Reality Defender Co-Founder and CEO Ben Colman went on CNBC’s Last Call to talk with Brian Sullivan about this unique case, Twitter’s failure in preventing its widespread release, and why a multi-billion loss of stock market value is the least worst thing to come.

OpenAI Doubles Down on Regulation

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI’s for-profit arm, spoke last Tuesday before a Senate judiciary committee on the regulation of AI (which Altman claims is “essential.”) “We think that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models,” said Altman during his testimony. At the same time, Atlman proclaimed the release of OpenAI and other tools “vastly outweigh [their] risks,” though the company does test and employ safety measures before releasing new systems (like GPT4) to the public.

Altman (along with other members of the OpenAI team) also wrote on the coming worries about a “superintelligence” and the need for establishing a governing body to regulate it. The whole post is a fascinating read, including how the company feels that such a superintelligence could surpass AGI, the “holy grail” of artificial intelligence.

Taiwan Cracks Down on Deepfake Fraud

Committing fraud with deepfakes in Taiwan now carries a prison sentence and/or a fine after new legislation passed on the matter this week. Read the full report on the amendment to the country’s Personal Data Protection act in the Taipei Times.

UK Raises Concerns on AI

As the U.S. figures out potential laws and regulating bodies for AI, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is looking to monitor and reign in control of AI "with guard rails in place." The Guardian has the full story on the PM’s comments, which are more in line with the dangers of applications like ChatGPT and the possible redundancy-related ramifications.

More News

• This week saw a number of celebrities speak out on AI including:

• Ice Cube, who threatened to sue anyone creating “demonic” music using his AI likeness. (The Fader)
• Sting, who warns “We cannot allow the machines to take over.” (BBC)
• Sean Penn, who calls LLMs and AI “a human obscenity.” (AV Club)
• Elizabeth Banks, who called AI scripts “terrifying.” (Deadline)
• Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys, who welcomes AI to help songwriters overcome writer’s block. (The Guardian)
• Tom Hanks, who views it as a way to keep acting after death. (Variety)
• Electronic artist Holly Herndon, who demonstrated the dangers of singing away the rights to one’s voice with a clip from The Little Mermaid. (Twitter)

• Former President Donald Trump shared a deepfake of Anderson Cooper on his social network. (Popular Science)
• New York City schools, which once banned ChatGPT, now looks to tap into its potential. (Chalkbeat)
• CNET’s staff is unionizing after witnessing their fellow editors and writers being replaced by AI. (WGA East)
• Together is yet another open-source generative AI company that just received a fair amount of funding. (TechCrunch)
• Amazon will apparently add ChatGPT-style searching to its platform. (Time)
• Debt collectors are using GPT4 in collection attempts. (Vice)
• Apple banned employees from using ChatGPT with fears of potentially revealing company secrets. (The Verge)
• Apple is also looking to make key GenAI talent hires. (TechCrunch)
• Lastly, Apple’s iOS 17 will allow users to replicate their voice simply by recording 15 minutes of audio. (The Hill)

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