by Paul Kengor
In recent weeks, we’ve seen a slew of stories about the two leading presidential candidates—Joe Biden and Donald Trump—flagging the growing dangers of AI and related technology as they campaign in earnest. Examples range from alleged disinformation and video distortions to outright counterfeit images. The warnings are certainly exact.
Sure, AI has the potential for great benefits, whether it’s in healthcare or even something like GPS, but it also has the potential for terrible political abuse. To be specific, to be technical, it’s calledgenerative artificial intelligence” that can be directed to produce counterfeit human voices, images, texts, and videos. It can be used to create some of the worst “fake news.”
To that end, it’s chilling to think of how AI could be used during an election campaign, or worse, on election morning itself — like the one coming up on November 5, 2024. The destructive potential is significant.
To be sure, the latest case of alleged video distortions — involving Joe Biden — was highly questionable. Consider the claims made a few weeks ago by figures like White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and scandalously leftist Associated Pressjust to name a few suspects. According to Jean-PierreViral videos of a bewildered and dazed Joe Biden, vigorously promoted by the Republican National Committee’s research team, were “cheap fakes.”
Ms. Jean-Pierre’s claims were laughable and fell flat because the extensive majority of Americans have seen enough footage of the aging president to know that the man really does seem to be on the brink of dementia. There was footage of Biden staring aimlessly at D-Day memorials in France, frozen in a momentary daze at celebrity fundraisers with George Clooney and Julia Roberts, walking away alone as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni motherly led him back to the press box at the G-7, or onto the stage with a younger Obama carefully guiding a bewildered Biden in the right direction.
And then, of course, came last week’s historic, utterly unforgettable, game-changing presidential debate. A near-catatonic President Biden made it clear to all of America that any suggestion that the videos had to be manipulated to show that he was mentally unfit was pure nonsense. Every sane American now knows that Joe Biden is too senior for office. He should not run again.
Maybe we should be vigilant about the counterfeit AI videos the Democratic National Committee has put out in Biden’s defense. Maybe a “cheap knockoff” of Sleepy Joe hitting a golf ball 50 yards. Take that, Trump!
Regardless, is it like Jean-Pierre’s original? double claims were essential, it doesn’t really matter. My point is that the propensity for political fraud with AI-manipulated video is very real. It could have a dramatic effect on elections.
Artificial Intelligence in the Presidential Elections
As an example of this potential, researchers from the University of Washington and MIT created counterfeit voice and video images of Barack Obama. University of Washington’s ‘Fake Obama’ Simulation actually took place six years ago. So this recent technology exists, although it is now rapidly developing and evolving. A more recent case of MIT struck me because the video allegedly show “Obama” supporting MIT professor’s computer science course. That got me thinking: What if a Republican con artist produced a video on the morning of November 5, 2024, of a counterfeit “Obama” endorsing, say, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or one of the left-wing presidential candidates instead of Joe Biden, with the intention of taking votes away from Sleepy Joe that day? That’s entirely plausible.
Sure, Barack Obama and the Biden campaign will do everything they can to denounce the video as counterfeit, but they likely won’t do so before the video goes viral and costs Biden crucial votes in a close election.
The potential for damage to the two leading candidates runs both ways. And that brings me to Donald Trump.
trump card two and a half weeks ago I spoke with a podcaster Logan Paul on AI. Trump noted two things that stand out.
First, on the positive side of AI’s potential, Trump said that one of his “top people” when he was president was talking to him about an upcoming speech, and then “he hit the button click, click, click, and about 15 seconds later he showed me my speech, written so beautifully, I said, ‘I’m going to use this thing.'”
It was a strange statement, probably over the top, and fairly harmless (though as a writer who used to write speeches, I hate the idea of computers writing speeches). Trump’s next statement was anything but that.
Trump added that he was recently presented with a counterfeit video of himself promoting the product. The counterfeit was so professionally done that Trump himself couldn’t tell it was a counterfeit: “The voice was perfect, the lips moved perfectly with every word,” Trump explained. “If you were a lip reader, you’d say, ‘This is absolutely perfect.’”
Trump told Logan Paul that the technology was “scary” because of the national security implications. He conjured up fabricated images of a sitting US president claiming that “13 nuclear missiles” had just been launched against an adversary and would strike in 13 minutes. Trump told Paul that he asked Elon Musk if an adversary like China or Russia could immediately know “that this is not the real President Trump.” Musk told him no: “There is no way.”
Here are Donald Trump’s hypothetical scenarios. Now imagine this one involving Trump in the November 2024 campaign:
We now know that the claims by liberals — the great election deniers — that Donald Trump conspired with Vladimir Putin in 2016 to steal the 2016 election from their beloved Hillary Clinton were a fraud. The entire Russia dossier and the “golden shower” narrative were a nasty fraud. We also knew that it took years and millions of dollars of the federal government’s time and money to expose that fraud, and that the Mueller report ultimately exonerated Trump, but not before every liberal and millions of Americans accepted the left’s screaming hysteria as truth.
But imagine this: a counterfeit video of Donald Trump generated by progressives or foreign opponents on the morning of Election Day, November 5, 2024. Imagine a counterfeit video linking him to Putin and the Russians in some kind of collusion. It would be a “Russia dossier” on steroids, with video “evidence” to back it up. Imagine the video hitting, exploding, and going viral that morning, as voters head to the polls and CNN, the Drudge Report, and MSNBC are reporting the counterfeit news. Trump denies it as quickly as he can, but millions of Americans don’t believe him and, more importantly, cast their votes before he can debunk the video. That’s a “November surprise” that could easily swing an election in which Trump and Biden are separated by less than 1 percent.
Don’t be surprised that the left doesn’t do this, nor do the Chinese or Russians who wrote the textbook on the subject. disinformation (disinformation). Leftists, and even some liberals, are finally equating Trump with Hitler. He is a “Nazi” who wants to “destroy democracy!” Like the French Resistance in World War II, our fearless progressives will do anything to overthrow this mad dictator.
Of course, Trump supporters have been worried about how his enemies might manipulate the presidential election since 2020. But they’re thinking about classic methods like social media censorship, mass mail-in voting, and ballot stuffing. The newest, smartest tool in his bag of tricks, though, is artificial intelligence. Is Trump’s team ready?
Election Protection
This is not some columnist’s passing thought that can be dismissed as mere journalism. This very real threat is drawing the attention of experts. They are brainstorming potential responses.
Single Source, Pioneer in the Field Artificial intelligencereviewed the article and told me, “It occurred to me while I was reading it that one possible way to deal with this problem would be to provide a series of vaccinations for the voting public.” He did not specify what such a series might look like, fearing that it could be “very dangerous” in itself because of the possibilities it would highlight.
There are concrete examples of what he was talking about. There are now technology groups production of demos that showcase what AI-generated counterfeit content looks like in hopes of vaccinating voters and preparing campaign staff.
Our founder in American viewerBob Tyrrell forwarded me an email last week that he received from a California non-profit called Civilian AI who specializes in just that. “There’s a lot of talk about AI and how it can turbocharge disinformation, disrupt elections, and more,” CivAI says in its email, “but what does that actually look like?” The group is trying to “raise awareness of the dangers of AI” and even offers demos showing “how easy it is to sow election chaos or deceive thousands of people using publicly available technology. They can even create deepfakes and fake news… in real time.” The organization offers “AI tools” on how to respond.
Entire organizations are being created and operating as it becomes increasingly obvious to everyone how this could blow up in November 2024. One wonders if Team Trump and Team Biden are ready. They better be.
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Paul Kengor is the editor of The American Spectator. Dr. Kengor is also a professor of political science at Grove City College, a senior fellow at the Center for Vision & Values, and the author of more than a dozen books, including A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Communism, and Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.
Photo “Computer Programmer” by cottonbro studio.
