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They are not journalists, they are avatars: Chavismo promotes propaganda made with artificial intelligence

2023-02-20T10:45:10.109Z


False reports about economic improvements in Venezuela, driven by computer profiles, have begun circulating as advertisements on YouTube


A blond man introduces a report for

the House of News En Español

, an alleged newscast in English in which he attempts to demonstrate that the Venezuelan economy is not "so destroyed", because the hotel occupancy for the next Carnival holiday would already be taken over by Venezuelans eager to spend money on Caribbean beaches.

In another video, a black presenter shows the profits generated by the Caribbean Series, held a week ago in Caracas: 10 million dollars in tickets to watch baseball games, 7 million dollars in food bought by the fans, data that They are surprised when the Government has not even specified how much it cost to finish two stadiums in record time with the financial cuts that, as they constantly repeat, international sanctions have left them.

The alleged journalists are Noah and Daren, two avatars created with artificial intelligence from the Synthesia software's catalog of more than a hundred multiracial faces.

Like Noah and Daren, among the avatars offered by the application there are others who look dressed as television presenters, but there is also Dave as a doctor and an executive, Carlo with a construction helmet, a woman in a hijab, a chef and even Santa Claus.

A few months ago, some of them, also in their role as reporters, were used in a disinformation campaign in favor of China,

The New York Times

denounced a few days ago .

The videos of the fake presenters talking about Venezuela have gained hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, went viral on social networks like Tik Tok and were inserted as paid advertising on the platform.

In addition, they were broadcast on the state television station Venezolana de Televisión, the main megaphone on television in favor of the Government of Nicolás Maduro.

Chavismo has already made use of bot strategies and troops of paid tweeters to promote labels and rarefy conversations on social networks.

Now, while the world is still trying to understand the woes and promises of ChatGPT, the complex propaganda apparatus orbiting the Venezuelan crisis has quickly incorporated artificial intelligence into the digital artillery.

02:04

House of news |

Venezuela and its economy, myth or reality?

Noah is one of the avatars created by artificial intelligence to speak on the newscast. Photo: House Of News Español |

Video: House Of News Spanish

With a subscription of just a few dollars a month, the Synthesia user can input a written script for the software to generate the ultra-realistic video with voices available in more than a hundred languages ​​and accents and lip-syncing of the avatar.

The company was created in 2017 by entrepreneurs and researchers from universities in the United States and Europe, according to its website.

The catalog of avatars is made of "digital twins", actors who have provided the images and have received payment for it, they say in their frequently asked questions section.

They promote "synthetic media," calling it "one of the most exciting developments that has enabled recent progress in

deep learning."

, with which they seek to "empower people" to create content for commercial purposes only, since "political, sexual, personal or discriminatory content" is not tolerated, they say.

But this recent progress has also found the

deepfake

that is behind this technology and that paves the way for the great epidemic of disinformation.

“Artificial intelligence is being democratized and made accessible.

Many people have free trial periods of these software or they are left open for the public to train them with the idea that these videos are more and more realistic”, explains Héctor Mazarri, from Cazadores de Fake News, the organization that made the autopsy on the videos of Noah and Daren talking about Venezuela to find their origins and alert about a new disinformation campaign by Chavismo and the spread of misleading data.

“In this case, what we are seeing is an organized attempt to push certain narratives favorable to the government.

Although a trained user can realize the errors, this is done so that no one is exempt from not believing it”, adds the journalist.

“Disinformation is a global problem and its purpose is to make us mistrust everything and polarize, which is why it is necessary to create a community of infocitizens, so that people can understand how this works and put much of the information that comes to them in quarantine in order to contain the spread of information. impulse to replicate or believe it.

For Mazarri, this is just the beginning of what is to come, which includes voice cloning, which poses great challenges in the hoax-hunting to which he dedicates himself.

“Development and investment has grown in artificial intelligence, but it is the public that has promoted that

boom

, because the more you use it, the more reliable it becomes and this generates great competition among technology companies”.

01:09

House of news |

The Caribbean Series Venezuela 2023

Daren is another of the avatars created by artificial intelligence. Photo: House Of News Español |

Video: House Of News Spanish

the conquest of conversation

Since 2018, the ProBox Observatory has been following the behavior of sociopolitical trends in social networks in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Monitoring the propaganda machinery of the Venezuelan ruling party has allowed them to identify patterns.

Every day, early in the day, from the Twitter account of the Ministry of Communication and Information of Venezuela, the label that will be positioned for the day is published thanks to an indeterminate army of real tweeters and automated accounts -the so-called troop- who will receive cash bonuses through the Patria System, through which pensions and some public administration salaries are distributed.

“This is done with the intention of making certain narratives believe in international public opinion, such as that of the hashtag this week #LasSancionesMatanSalario, which already has a million messages, but if you compare it with independent media you know that it is not So.

Mainly it is about generating propaganda, diverting the focus, changing the narrative”, explains Estefanía Da Silva, general coordinator of ProBox.

During the past week, according to the monitoring carried out by the observatory, more than 10 million messages associated with Chavismo were generated.

“96.5% are manipulated messages that come from automated accounts or possible bots.

Everything moves through coordinated accounts in an inauthentic way.”

In another case, with the hashtag #LasSancionesSonContraElPueblo, 1,350,000 messages were generated through 15,392 users, to which are added some 5,750 possible bots and automated accounts.

This produces an artificial behavior of the trend.

Da Silva adds that they have also registered the participation of accounts from Nicaragua and Cuba to position specific labels, which leads them to conclude that these are coordinated actions between the propaganda apparatus of those governments.

In a Telegram group that brings together 740 tweeters, they discussed the amount of this week's bonus.

It would be between 96 and 120 bolivars, between 3 and 5 dollars, according to the comments.

The Government has established categories to reward work, artificially promoting labels, as if they were the Olympics: bronze, gold and silver.

“They must bear in mind that tweeters become spammers for the microblog network.

This is why the work must be paused so that your account is not banned or suspended”, recommended a tutorial shared several times in the group called Active Twitter users.

The strategy has turned Twitter into a minefield for Venezuelans.

ProBox monitors messages in the sociopolitical spectrum of the ruling party, but also from the opposition, civil society, anonymous accounts and other actors.

Digital activism for human rights or in recent weeks for the demand for a salary increase only grows in waves, when the protest also has its counterpart in the street.

In general, adds Da Silva, "the ruling party conquers conversations", even if they are between bots, paid tweeters and now with artificial intelligence avatars.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-02-20

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