Mastodawn

I need your help.

The US midterm elections are under attack. On YouTube, I constantly encounter American AI generated political commentary channels that are picking up followers, and I am convinced the objective is to use these channels to disinform the public in the fall.

Please help by reporting this video as misinformation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P0EwPwF7jw

If you are not sure this is AI, notice the way it repeats the same few hand gesture multiple times throughout the video.

1/2

#disinformation

Randahl Fink 1d ago

For documentation, I am attaching a short clip where the hand gesture is shown.

Apart from this AI bot looking unnatural, the people behind this clearly also overlook the fact, that human political commentators normally do not produce their content from a creative home studio filled with crayons, colourful paper and beige pottery.

2/2

Ray Gulick, he/him/wtf 🇺🇦 ❌👑1d ago

Also, this is one of the standard AI voices often used in AI videos.

DoktorZjivago 1d ago

@randahl Yes and her teeth keep change in shape as well

Sebastian Lauwers 1d ago

@doktorzjivago @randahl What about her disappearing lips every other plosive?

Speed demon 🇪🇺 🇳🇴🇺🇦🇵🇸1d ago

@doktorzjivago Yes! Clearly visible in the two stills in the top of this thread. *weird* @randahl

@randahl weird to imagine anyone wouldn’t instantly recognize this as #AIslop. There’s a disconnect between the mouth movements and the voice.

Randahl Fink 1d ago

@Crow I often see thousands of comments on these channels where viewers clearly demonstrate they think everything is legit.

King of Tors 1d ago

@Crow @randahl Yes, but this isn't just an AI problem. I've been working in sound for picture since way before AI joined the party and there has been a marked slide in the acceptance levels for lip sync in video editing software and common workflows. I can't even relax when I watch TV if I'm looking at the mouths. And so many Netflix viewers watch dubbed versions of foreign shows without even noticing it wasn't filmed in English. The dubbing has been happening since, oh I doubt the Jazz Singer was dubbed into foreign languages, but not long after that, and it's one of the many examples of technology making things worse in our business. We used to edit "deep fakes" with razor blades and open reel tape and I swear we did it better.

@kingtor
A lot of the blame is on the playback devices. My crappy Samsung TV can not get sound to synch with vision reliably and the Apple TV never does. It's so much easier to keep sound in synch when editing these days, compared to when you needed a chinagraph pencil and a Steenbeck.
@Crow @randahl

King of Tors 1d ago

@stib @Crow @randahl True, but it's also easier to mess it up. The amount of time the dialog editors have to spend chasing sync has gone way up in my career. I used to be confident that the guide track was in sync, then for awhile had to say "that's the picture editor's job: give me a guide track in sync and I will deliver a finished dialog track in sync," and get it from them. Now I play it for the director in sync with the guide track and the director says "oh, that's from the camera that records audio 2 frames out of sync," and say "isn't that your job?" when I ask why no one had thought to fix that earlier. (True story.)

@kingtor @Crow @randahl What camera is that? Is it a double head system? I can't work out how you'd go about setting it up to be capable of doing this on the cameras I work with (Ursa, FX6, Red Dragon).

King of Tors 13h ago

@stib @Crow @randahl Oh, I don't know. I think it was a consumer Hi8 or some bull...oney. And from what very little I know about the Hi8 format, it was likely a problem ingesting the footage and would've been best fixed then.

King of Tors 13h ago

@stib @Crow @randahl Worth noting I am talking about micro-budget truly indie filmmaking. I also work on Hollywood stuff, but these days it's usually ADR recording/mixing and when the client asks me about sync, they're talking about my eyes and the picture, not guide track and phase lock. I haven't done any dialog editing for one of them in quite a few years. Back in those days, the auto-conform was +/- a half frame or so and we had to watch out for pull-up/-down issues, but the guide track from the Avid was pretty solid. I started noticing issues with guide tracks when Final Cut Pro was starting to work it's way into the business, and it's only gotten worse since. And I've seen some things in movie theaters and on awards screeners (back when they were on DVD/BluRay) that are pretty messed up. Some on movies that have won major sound editing awards. :/

@kingtor
Hi8 is wild, I shot a doco on it, analogue S-video pictures, digital sound, all squeezed on a tiny tape. Not one I want to use again.
@Crow @randahl

King of Tors 9h ago

@stib I worked with a guy once who called me years after we'd last worked together because we was archiving some Hi8 tapes while he still could. He was having trouble with sync, specifically drift, and I couldn't quite figure out what was going wrong, but figured I could probably come up with some workaround, so I offered to check it out if he'd just send me the drive of what he'd gotten digitized. I could hear him blush over the phone as he muttered something about he wasn't even sure what was on them and one might be a sex tape. I never heard from him about that project again

I have hearing issues so I tend to watch lips to help.
That does not look right, the mouth movements while mostly correct do not look right. The C for instance in C-Span. Listening to that would tire me.

Almost as annoying to look at as sound that is slightly out of sync.

Randahl Fink 1d ago

@nerb I know exactly what you mean. And hopefully this also helps many people realise this is fake.

Jan Eggers 1d ago

@randahl The multi-detector "Search Whisperer" flags screenshots as likely made with Flux (which actually does not offer video generation). A commercial detector also fires. Googles Backstory tool detects traces of SynthID which means that this be AI-generated keyframes stitched together with a video generator. None of this is proof that it is truly AI, as other detectors fail to detect foul play.

Jan Eggers 1d ago

@randahl The most curious find by Google's Backstory tool was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCyJPc928po - a Vietnamese clone of the video with an overvoice.

ĐIỀU NÀY KHÔNG THỂ CÓ THẬT!'John Barron' gọi điện cho C-SPAN sau thất bại lớn nhất tại Tòa án tối ca

YouTube

Randahl Fink 1d ago

@janeggers very interesting. What I really want is a way to find a long list of these AI videos, so I can make a real commentary video drawing attention to the problem.

Jan Eggers 1d ago

@randahl You might want to visit the r/isthisAI subreddit to enlist help. ;)

Jan Eggers 1d ago

@randahl indicator.media and 404media.co might be interested in this.

Anders Christensen 1d ago

@randahl
The lighting and shadows in the background (apparently by the sun through the window) is the same in multiple videos.

But, they could claim that the background is a green screen.

Lori M Olson 1d ago

@randahl also that ring light should be in use, between the camera and the subject 🤨

Virginicus 1d ago

@randahl Also, humans make video with the ring light in front of them, not behind. 😀

Aurora 🐌1d ago

@randahl The blinkin is strange.
The rides also appears and dissapears.

And the ring light behind her

Alfred J. Kwak (audiokontor) ☕1d ago

@randahl most of these "explained"-channels are AI generated. it's disgusting.
sentences like this might be a good hint about if the channel is AI generated: "This content is for educational and informational purposes and represents opinion and analysis of publicly available information. We encourage viewers to research multiple sources and form their own conclusions."

Randahl Fink 1d ago

@mc good point.

Jorge Candeias 1d ago

@randahl Are you sure Youtube isn't in on it?

'Cause I'm absolutely not.

Randahl Fink 1d ago

@jorgecandeias I understand your scepticism, and I do not pretend to know all of YouTube's motives, but I do appreciate that YouTube have taken down several of the accounts I have reported. That is a good sign.

Last few days there's a whole new style of quasi-identical Russian/Far-right bots here on Mastodon. This has been going on for ~1year, but this latest attack is quite intense. If you follow #EU / #Ukraine tags, you'll see them.

Clues =
• meaningless mixed letter name
• 0 to a few followers
• Lots of posts in a short time
• Many posts beginning / ending with ellipses (threads)
• Often posts are identical to those of other bots/accounts
• Seeing a lot in French language

João Tiago Rebelo (NAFO J-121)1d ago

@gsymon just mention the posts in question with the NAFO or NAFOTakedown hashtags. The fellas will be on it ASAP and trying to find the admins/who owns the domain/server to put an end to the russian propaganda.

You're seeing a lot in French because the Municipal Elections were last weekend and this weekend, if I'm not mistaken. Putin's buddies need "mairies" now, before trying to reach higher government places.
@randahl

Additionally a common tell is that Russian bots equate Ukraine with being Nazi. But yeah, its a common thing. I hope that the Russians don't figure out a way to weaponize the Fediverse like they did other social networks.

@ChuckMcManis @randahl

They may not manage to weaponise it, but they can still flood it, if we let them, at which point it's broken. Putin only knows how to break things, not build them.

@randahl Also, watch her mouth with the sound off. After a few seconds, it looks robotic.

Thanks for all you do. So appreciated.

Barbara Monaco 1d ago

@randahl I am in the US, and am not sure how to report this. YouTube doesn't allow us to report content creators for misinformation. They can be reported for a number of other reasons. I reported as spam.
Interesting that some YouTube videos are labeled as AI or altered content, while many more are not.

Stephan Okhuijsen 1d ago

@randahl And her hair is the same in some of the other video's I checked. Which is impossible for that kind of hair over time.

cwicseolfor 1d ago

@randahl #alt4you Two stills of what looks like a brunette woman in a pink and white room, speaking with raised eyebrows and a hand up in a pincer gesture. However, the two photographs are totally identical to the pixel except around her lower face, chin, and mouth. Neither her forehead, hand, hair, or shoulders have moved at all. It is clearly generated imagery.

Randahl Fink 1d ago

@cwicseolfor Thank you. Added.

everton137 1d ago

@randahl disinformation. *

Google is aligned with the Trump administration, as far as I know.

Lydia Schoch 1d ago

@randahl Reported!

Miss Gayle 1d ago

Did you not notice the CEO of Google at cheeto's inauguration?

Google is in on the coup.