The White House wants to ‘cryptographically verify’ videos of Joe Biden so viewers don’t mistake them for AI deepfakes::Biden’s AI advisor Ben Buchanan said a method of clearly verifying White House releases is “in the works.”
I honestly do not see the value here. Barring maybe a small minority, anyone who would believe a deepfake about Biden would probably also not believe the verification and anyone who wouldn’t would probably believe the administration when they said it was fake.
The value of the technology in general? Sure. I can see it having practical applications. Just not in this case.
Sure, the grandparents that get all their news via Facebook might see a fake Biden video and eat it up like all the other hearsay they internalize.
But, if they’re like my parents and have the local network news on half the damn time, at least the typical mainstream network news won’t be showing the forged videos. Maybe they’ll even report a fact check on it?!?
And yeah, many of them will just take it as evidence that the mainstream media is part of the conspiracy. That’s a given.
If a cryptographic claim/validation is provided then anyone refuting the claims can be seen to be a bad faith actor. Voters are one dimension of that problem but mainstream media being able to validate election videos is super important both domestically, but also internationally as the global community needs to see efforts being undertaken to preserve free and fair elections. This is especially true given the consequences if america’s enemies are seen to have been able to steer the election.
It helps journalists, etc, when files have digital signatures verifying who is attesting to it. If the WH has their own published public key for signing published media and more then it’s easy to verify if you have originals or not.
Problem is that broadly speaking, you would only sign the stuff you want to sign.
Imagine you had a president that slapped a toddler, and there was a phone video of it from the parents. The white house isn’t about to sign that video, because why would they want to? Should the journalists discard it because it doesn’t carry the official White House blessing?
It would limit the ability for someone to deep fake an official edit of a press briefing, but again, what if he says something damning, and the ‘official’ footage edits it out, would the press discard their own recordings because they can’t get it signed, and therefore not credible?
That’s the fundamental challenge in this sort of proposal, it only allows people to endorse what they would have wanted to endorse in the first place, and offers no mechanism to prove/disprove third party sources that are the only ones likely to carry negative impressions.
It’s not a challenge, because this is only valid for photos and videos distributed by the White House, which they already wouldn’t do.
The challenge is that it would have to leave out all the photos and videos taken by journalists and spectators. That’s where the possible baby slapping would come out, and we would still have no idea whether to trust it
But then the journalists have to check if the source is trustworthy, as usual. Then they can add their own signature to help other papers check it
I don’t even think that matters when Trump’s people are watching media that won’t verify it anyway.
The world is not black and white. There are not just trump supporters and Biden supporters. I know it’s hard to grasp but there are tons of people in the the toss up category.
You’re right that this probably won’t penetrate the deeply perverted world of trump cultists, but the wh doesn’t expect to win the brainwashed over. They are going for those people who could go one way or another.
