AP: Musk shared manipulated video imitating Harris' voice. This raises concerns about AI impact on elections

A manipulated video that imitates the voice of US Vice President Kamala Harris saying something she did not say raises concerns about the ability of artificial intelligence to mislead on election day, which will take place in the United States in about three months, UNN writes with reference to AP.

Details

The video gained attention after tech billionaire Elon Musk shared it on his social media platform X on Friday night without explicitly stating that it was originally released as a parody.

The video uses many of the same visuals as the real ad that Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, released last week to launch her campaign. But in the video, the voiceover is replaced by another voice that convincingly impersonates Harris, the newspaper writes.

The video reportedly retains the "Harris for President" branding. It also includes some real footage from the past with Harris.

Mia Ehrenberg, a spokeswoman for the Harris campaign, said in an email to the Associated Press: "We believe the American people want the real freedom, opportunity, and security that Vice President Harris offers, not the fake manufactured lies of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

The original user who posted the video, a YouTuber known as Mr. Reagan, disclosed to both YouTube and X that the doctored video was a parody. But Musk's post, which, according to the platform, has been viewed more than 123 million times, only includes the caption "This is awesome" with a laughing emoji.

Although some users of X's "community notes" feature, which adds context to posts, suggested that Musk's message be tagged, as of Sunday afternoon, it had not been tagged. Some users online wondered whether his message might violate X's policy, which states that users "may not share synthetic, fake, or out-of-context media that could deceive or confuse people and cause harm.

The policy has an exception for memes and satire if they do not cause "significant confusion about the authenticity of the media.

Earlier this month, Musk endorsed former US President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate. 

Two experts specializing in AI-generated media studied the audio of the fake ad and confirmed that most of it was created using AI technology.

"The widely shared video is an example of how lifelike AI-generated images, videos or audio clips have been utilized both to poke fun and to mislead about politics as the United States draws closer to the presidential election. It exposes how, as high-quality AI tools have become far more accessible, there remains a lack of significant federal action so far to regulate their use, leaving rules guiding AI in politics largely to states and social media platforms," the publication says.

The video also raises the question of how best to deal with content that blurs the lines of what is considered appropriate use of AI, especially if it falls into the category of satire.

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