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I was faked in a nasty video made with AI, and it’s sort of been bothering me ever since it happened late last year.
The perpetrators used my Daily Brief videos to create a fake version of one. Their purpose was pretty clear: They were trying to whip up hatred against refugees in Europe. It was full of lies about Ukrainian refugees, in particular, and had a far-right edge to it, aiming to get people in Europe more fearful and hateful of refugees. They had me saying all kinds of craziness.
I don’t know who did it, of course, but I’m guessing it was someone supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – someone trying to denigrate Ukrainians in the eyes of people in the EU and to disrupt EU sympathy for Ukrainians and Ukraine generally, perhaps.
The quality of the video is not very high. Yes, it looks like me doing one of my daily videos, but my accent is weird, the lip sync is off, and the message is hateful, incendiary, and ridiculous.
That is, it’s ridiculous to anyone familiar with me, with my Daily Brief, or with Human Rights Watch.
To you who know me and my organization, you know we’re not going to be bashing refugees or spouting far-right hate. I mean, really, it’s just nuts.
Yet, thousands of people viewed the fake video, and you can bet few viewers will know the difference, especially as the video was posted in far-right circles, where Human Rights Watch’s authentic material probably doesn’t have much reach.
It’s the first time it’s happened to me, but it’s not a first for HRW generally. Our video work has been misused like this before. As our regular readers and viewers should know, if anyone is ever in any doubt about the authenticity of an HRW publication or video, you can always check our website, including the Daily Brief archive pages specifically.
I’ve been reflecting on this incident over the past month or so to try to understand what it means.
First, forget “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…” as Oscar Wilde said (or copied from someone else). These are far-right folks using HRW’s brand and people who generally hate HRW for saying things like, refugees are human and have rights.
Still, it says something about the power and respect HRW has, even among people who don’t like us.
But it’s creepy, and it bothers me.
Honestly, I suspected something like this would happen with the Daily Brief eventually. With all that video material available online, I figured someone would one day feed it into AI for their own purposes. It just happened sooner than I imagined.
The use of AI is spreading rapidly. Its impacts can undermine our words. I thought I was prepared for it to happen to me. I wasn’t.