We repeat it ad nauseam but that's why it doesn't stop being true.
No sir.
Journalists and the serious newspapers where we write are, today more than ever, the guardians of civilization, the pilots who navigate the murky waters of the Internet to
prevent the ship of democracy from crashing on the rocks of fake news
.
We are the thin black and white line, the main defense against virtual vandals who abuse Instagram, TikTok or Twitter (renamed 'X') to sow lies, encourage discord and put social peace at risk.
“Today more than ever,” I say.
Because?
Due to the sudden penetration of artificial intelligence (AI) into our lives, which submerges what was merely fake into the deep darkness of “deep fake.”
There are no sacred cows for the invisible agents of subversion.
Look at the American singer Taylor Swift,
the most important human being on Earth, according to the venerable Time magazine
, which at the end of 2023 put her photo on its cover and declared her “Person of the Year.”
Just two weeks later, pornographic images of Swift emerged from the sewers of the internet, viewed on 'X' 47 million times.
I'm sorry.
I don't have the link.
(I understand that they may have deleted it.) But the important thing is the following: thanks to the permanent surveillance of us journalists, I can inform you, exclusively, that the images were not real but deep fakes generated by AI.
No no.
Please.
Zero need to say thank you.
For that we are.
That is, to expose the falsehoods that circulate on the networks.
To give another example: they say that Javier Milei talks to his deceased dog through a medium.
As if the president of Argentina were a character taken from 'Conan, the Barbarian' or 'Alice in Wonderland'! Who can think of that?
Another deep fake: that a 77-year-old insurrectionist rapist with the emotional age of a six-year-old boy is the favorite to win the United States presidential elections.
This is what we see and hear and read on the networks.
The slightest common sense tells you that it cannot be.
A five-year-old boy knows right away that that character, with that hair and that orange skin color, is an AI invention, from a cartoon.
But this news is old.
Today I am going to focus on a recent deep fake, unnoticed, incredibly, by all Spaniards.
I am referring to the case of Alberto Nuñez Feijóo,
a right-wing politician who has just been a victim of the same thing that Taylor Swift suffered
, an attack on his reputation.
Feijóo, the leader of the opposition in the Spanish parliament, from the Popular Party, is a gray guy who is not at risk of appearing on the cover of Time magazine.
But there is also not the slightest risk that he might have said, never, ever.
the words that were put in his mouth on Wednesday regarding the crazy Catalan independence uprising.
This was (excuse the language) what Feijóo supposedly said:
“What is evident is that what happened in Catalonia is pure terror and it is pure fascism, because people could not go out into the streets, because people could not take their train, they could not take their plane, they could not take their car. , because people were afraid and did not leave their house.”
Yes. That was what I read in the “news” that appears on my cell phone.
There were even images of Feijóo saying these words in what was intended to be understood as his own voice.
Well, it's hard for me to believe I have to point it out, but it was all obviously a crude setup.
An attempt by his enemies to torpedo the well-deserved image of him as an example of the most solemn civic gravity.
Come on.
No one likes to make a fool of themselves, least of all very Spanish Spaniards like Feijóo, so steeped in the sublime value of “honor.”
Besides, Feijóo is a man with pretensions to being a statesman, to reach the level of President Milei, of whom his party is a big fan.
He knows what is happening in the rest of the world;
He has historical knowledge.
Of course he is able to distinguish between the “pure terror” of Hamas or the Israeli state or ETA, in which children are killed, and the childish histrionics of the independence movement.
No one died during that independent farce.
Nobody even threw a stone
.
There will be those who doubt my judgment.
There will be those who will believe that Feijóo said such an outrage.
Let's see.
I am not basing this solely on the high esteem I have for a man whose party won the majority of votes in last year's general election.
Journalists sometimes have to be detectives and one of the phrases he supposedly said gave me the clue that that video couldn't be real.
Feijóo's phrase that I am referring to was that “the people” (sorry again) “could not catch their plane.”
He was referring to an independence demonstration at the Barcelona airport on October 14, 2019. I will silence those who continue to doubt my judgment with a devastating fact: not only do I have the sense of smell of Sherlock Holmes, but I walk on the streets, like the reporters before me. IA of yesteryear, and I, ladies and gentlemen, was present that day, without any fear, at the Barcelona airport.
Most of the protesters were young people who
wandered around the premises in a flower power style
.
There were no shots, there were no bombs, there were no murders.
There were injuries, yes, almost all at the hands of the police, and some broken glass.
But Feijóo is old enough to remember, for example, the attack by a Palestinian commando at the Rome airport that left 34 dead in 1973.
Maintaining that this illustrious gentleman would be able to affirm that the brawl at the Barcelona airport was terrorism is slander.
Therefore, I hope that the guilty are found and that they are sued for offenses, as the adorably anachronistic Spanish law allows, against honor.