False video Pelosi fears campaigns

A false video of the President of the House Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiPelosi and Nadler muddle in the impeachment and voting procedure for contempt Hillary Clinton blames Trump for broadcasting a "sexist junk" about Pelosi Hillicon Valley: Facebook will not remove the tampered video of Pelosi | Trump denies having knowledge of fake Pelosi videos | Controversy over Assange's new charges | House Democrats Seek Bipartite Group on Net Neutrality (D-Calif.) Posted on Facebook on Thursday, which has been changed to make it look drunk, highlights a rapidly evolving danger for the 2020 campaigns.

A cycle after Russian interference in elections through hackers and fake social media publications has wreaked havoc, presidential candidates must now worry about videos falsified by intelligence technologies artificial, which can lead candidates to say things they have not said or to appear completely different.

The Pelosi video posted on Facebook did not use such advanced technologies.

This was slowed down to make Pelosi look sick or potentially drunk, and he still managed to deceive many people – at least judging by the comments.

The video had been viewed more than 2.5 million times on Friday afternoon. Facebook refuses to delete the clip, saying that it does not violate their guidelines, although they do not recommend the video in their news feed.

President TrumpDonald John TrumpA better VA, endowed with mental health services, is essential for US veterans Pelosi, Nadler gets tangled in the impeachment process, votes for contempt of power, Trump arrives in Japan to begin a visit to Japan. Four day state MORE wades into controversy, tweeting a Fox News clip this was compiled whenever Pelosi stumbled upon his words at a recent press conference. The clip included a Fox News commentator saying Pelosi was "worn out".

Coupled with Trump's remarks, it would at least seem that the president was trying to use the false video to his advantage to construct a story that the President "had lost", in Trump's words. But Trump denied having heard about the fake video.

The fake Pelosi video highlights the danger for which experts are offering more and more warnings.

Fabrice Pothier, a senior advisor to the Transatlantic Commission on the Integrity of Elections, said foreign actors could use fake videos "to sow mistrust and decrepitize their opponents".

Pothier said that Pelosi's video was essentially cheap and that more sophisticated counterfeit products would arrive.

"We're still at a rudimentary stage – the Pelosi video is a fundamental modification of an authentic video – but at this rate, it's only a matter of time before fully synthetic video and audio files – falsifications deep – generated by an algorithm rather than by video editing tools contaminate our sphere of information, "said Pothier.

John Villasenor, senior researcher at the Brookings Institution, said that using such videos in the countryside is "inevitable."

"Unfortunately, deepfakes will be part of the political landscape in the 2020 campaign and beyond," Villasenor said. "It's an inevitable next step in handling the information we saw during the 2016 campaign."

It is not clear if Pelosi's video will have such an impact.

But Charlotte Stanton, director of Silicon Valley's office at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, warned that a similar video – timed to perfection – could have a disastrous effect on an election.

"Can you imagine if a modified video like this one of a presidential candidate appeared a day before the elections?", She told The Hill.

She said many campaigns would not be ready to react to a fake video and even if they did, it could quickly become too late.

"By the time the campaign detects a fake, it will have circulated on social media," she said, saying it was incumbent on Facebook and other social media platforms. improve control of their content.

YouTube said it would remove any corrupted videos involving President Pelosi and that fake videos accumulating views violated her rules.

Facebook said it would flag the Pelosi video as potentially fake but would not remove it.

"In this particular case, this video would be eligible for verification of the facts by one of our third party partners," said Friday at The Hill a Facebook spokesman. "We asked the fact-finders to examine them. Last night, one of our partners checked the video and called it "False". We therefore drastically reduce its spread in News Feed and display additional context from this fact checker in the form of a "Related Articles" item in the news feed where it always appears .

Sen. Brian SchatzBrian Emanuel SchatzOvernight Energy: Democrats ask if EPA leader misled on vehicle emissions | Senators want NBC debate to focus on climate change | 2020: John Delaney unveils climate plan Democrat senators want NBC's main debate to focus on climate change. Defense at night: Trump officials say efforts to deter Iran work | Trump hires new secretary of the Air Force | House committee adopts defense bill that limits border wall funds MORE (D-Hawaii) criticized Facebook's response, tweeting Friday: "Facebook reacts very well to my office when I want to talk about federal legislation and suddenly we have balls in our mouth when we ask them to treat a fake video. It's not that they can not solve this problem; it is because they refuse to do what is necessary. "

The Deepfake videos have attracted the attention of federal and state legislators. This week, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill criminalizing the creation of a "deepfake" video in order to "hurt a candidate or influence the outcome of an election". The Texas Senate has already passed this bill in April, which is now awaiting Governor Signature.

At the federal level, Sen. Ben SasseBenjamin (Ben) Eric SasseSenate GOP votes for a permanent ban on reports The Hill & # 39; s Morning – The White House, Congress: the urgency of the current budget in the Senate Republicans are fleeing the law on the abortion of Alabama PLUS (R-Neb.) Presented at the end of the last congress a bill penalizing a person who had created or distributed "fraudulent audiovisual recordings". A spokesman for Sasse did not respond to the request for comment when it was billing him this congress.