Facebook’s CEO is target of latest doctored video
NEW YORK — Three weeks after Facebook refused to remove a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slurring her words, Mark Zuckerberg is getting a taste of his own medicine: fake footage showing him gloating over his one-man domination of the world.
It’s the latest flap over deviously altered “deepfake” videos as Facebook and other social media services struggle to stop the spread of misinformation and “fake news” while also respecting free speech and fending off allegations of censorship.
The somewhat crude video of the Facebook CEO, circulating on Facebook-owned Instagram over the past few days, combines news footage of Zuckerberg with phony audio.
“Imagine this for a second, one man with total control over billions of people’s stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures,” Zuckerberg seemingly intones in a voice that does not sound very much like Zuckerberg’s. “I owe it all to Spectre. Spectre showed me that whoever controls the data controls the future.” (Spectre is the evil organization in the James Bond movies.)
The video was created by artists Bill Posters and Daniel Howe with help from artificial intelligence companies and displayed over the past week in Britain.
Posters said he targeted Zuckerberg as “one person governing control of 2 billion people’s personal private data.”
When the Pelosi video turned up on Facebook, the social network said it did not violate any of its policies. Pelosi criticized Facebook at the time for leaving the video up. Facebook and Pelosi’s office declined to comment Wednesday.
Facebook said the Zuckerberg video likewise doesn’t violate its Instagram policies and will be left up.
“We will treat this content the same way we treat all misinformation on Instagram,” the company said in a statement.
The Zuckerberg video uses a form of artificial intelligence in which a computer is fed image and audio files of a person to learn how to mimic his or her facial expressions. An actor supplies the voice, and the computer then syncs up the image with the sound.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said that even though the Zuckerberg video is an art piece and not actual disinformation meant to deceive, it highlights the challenges of policing content on Facebook and Instagram.
“It just shows that it is still an uphill battle for the company as they try to rectify these issues that continue to plague the platform,” he said.