Taylor Swift deep fake videos and presidential politics
Poor Taylor Swift. She has more than 279 million followers on Instagram, but her troubles continue to mount. Worse, she now shares a problem with Joe Biden and Donald Trump, among others.
Even before that, however, she faced worrisome challenges. For instance, a stalker has been lurking near her New York City apartment and even tried to break in. New York’s misguided catch-andrelease policy for petty criminals lets him return again and again.
Then on Sunday Swift’s personal challenges grew when the Kansas City Chiefs punched their ticket to the Super Bowl. In case you haven’t heard, her boyfriend, tight end Travis Kelce, plays for the Chiefs.
This creates an existential personal dilemma for the pop singer. She’s been present – and relentlessly covered by the media — at virtually all of Kelce’s games this season, including Sunday’s playoff win in Baltimore.
Will she attend her beau’s biggest game of all? Her fans wonder because the Super Bowl is in Las Vegas on February 11 while her tour schedule includes a February 10 concert … in Tokyo.
DEEP FAKES
Media reports say Swift intends to do the concert, then try to reach Las Vegas in time for the kickoff. There’s no word yet on whether Air Force One will be dispatched to help her arrive on time and — perhaps — win President Biden some votes from fans of Swift, who has lent her name to a campaign encouraging young people to register and vote.
But Swift’s Japan-toVegas logistical challenges pale in comparison with the much more serious problem she shares with Biden and Trump. All are vulnerable to being the subject of deep fake videos, and voters can be swayed by this latest form of disinformation atop that already supplied by operatives based in Russia and Iran.
Such videos have already victimized Swift by falsely depicting her in salacious poses. Using artificial intelligence, the sleazy creators of these kinds of videos can place their targeted victims in settings where they never were and in poses they never assumed. They can also portray them uttering words they never said — or can rearrange their words to twist the meaning.
The one positive aspect of Swift’s victimization is that her fame heightened the visibility of the issues raised by deep fake videos. Last week, for instance, White House
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the situation “alarming” and urged social media platforms to act.
ELECTION YEAR
Sadly, deep fakes have already entered the political arena in an election year when the last thing public discourse needs is yet another reason for voters to distrust the process. During the runup to the New Hampshire primary, residents received deep fake robocalls purportedly from President Biden urging them not to vote.
Trump, who has sowed public distrust by claiming that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, is in a somewhat different situation.
Through the years he has been recorded saying so many outrageous things that it’s not necessary to put words in his mouth.
Instead, Trump’s detractors could simply take his own words, add scenes of his numerous mental lapses. and use AI to generate a background anywhere from one of Trump’s own golf courses to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island.
So, given that Trump, Biden, and other politicians on both sides of the aisle could be victimized by deep fake videos, perhaps this is — finally! — an issue on which Washington can overcome the kind of gridlock that has stalled action on urgent matters such as immigration, deficit spending, and aid to Ukraine and Israel.
Quick congressional action is needed to create a legal pathway to hold the creators of deceptive deep fake videos accountable. Otherwise, when Americans are asked “Whom do you trust?” — a question that’s arguably important to the preservation of public trust in our democracy — the cynical answer may well be “Nobody.”
Robert F. Sanchez, of Tallahassee, is a former member of the Miami Herald Editorial Board. He writes for the Herald’s conservative opinion newsletter, Right to the Point.