In several articles we have written in recent weeks we have noticed how attitudes are changing towards generative artificial intelligence.
We are increasingly divided into supporters: those who believe that AI will lead the world to ruin, and those who see it as the instrument of salvation.
Furthermore, books are coming out with a certain frequency that are starting to shed light, with commendable equidistance, on the subject.
Ma this does not mean that generative AI is not still (also) distortedly used. In this case, the world of images is perhaps more attractive – so to speak – than that of texts.
Mara Venier, the latest in a series of public figures who have had to deal with deepfake, against their will, knows something about it. Let’s find out what happened.
The scam against Mara Venier
Mara Venier would have appeared together with Elon Musk in a video in which she invites Italians to invest 250 euros for a financial project che permette “a ogni cittadino Italiano di guadagnare passivamente fino a €50.000 al mese utilizzando le srirtovolute e di diventare finanziariomente indipendente nel più brev е темро россибиле. Questo riano di guadagno è sоstеnuto dаllе реrсоне риù іnfluеnti е dаl gоvеrno del Раесе”.
The video (complete with the Rai logo) has been making the rounds on social media in recent days, in posts which even featured the name and surname of the entrepreneur who would have been behind this elusive project.
Here too, as we do weekly in the La bufala tech column, there are many elements which, if analyzed, would immediately lead one to think of a hoax. Even if the absurdity of such media exposure (the advertising of an online trading app) by a person of a certain notoriety would be enough.
Our Open colleagues took care of promptly unmasking the fraudulent fake news.
Mara Venier’s complaint
Once she became aware of the fraudulent use of her image manipulated with artificial intelligence, Mara Venier immediately reported the fact.
It will not be easy to trace the perpetrators of the scam, also because – as was to be expected – the name of the financial advisor cited again and again is non-existent. As well as, we suspect, the image of him.
Mara Venier’s is just the latest face used recently in our country for scams related to online trading. But for the first time, deepfake was used.
Previous
Software that produces fake images or videos can have great potential: let’s think about the world of cinema and, more specifically, dubbing.
But, as we were saying, image manipulation is perhaps the area that most tempts bad actors. There are many illustrious victims of the recent past: let’s mention for example Emma Watson and Scarlett Johansson. Or, in recent days, the case of Tom Hanks, who like Mara Venier personally reported the scam.
Ma deepfake doesn’t just affect VIPs: some young students from a Spanish town know something about it, whose photos manipulated by AI have produced porn images which were then circulated online.
The legislative vacuum
To stop the proliferation of dangerous fakes created by artificial intelligence, at least two aspects need to radically change.
Mara Venier has expressed herself well on the first, saying on social media that she has given a mandate to her lawyer. Who “highlighted how this episode is the clearest and most convincing proof of the serious prejudices that the illegal use of artificial intelligence can cause, in the absence of legislation that regulates the phenomenon”.
The legislative gap must therefore be filled. Although the feeling is that – as new technologies evolve more and more rapidly – there will be other occasions in which the law will be forced to chase.
So?
The problem of education
We are now pervaded by fake news, and the population needs to be literate to recognize it.
The fake video with Mara Venier and Elon Musk, for example, presents several naiveties. Yet, Venier always writes on her social profiles, “I have already received numerous phone calls from my fans, amazed at the fact that I allowed myself to be involved in a clearly deceptive initiative.”
Since deepfakes and other AI-based scams don’t just target public figures, and since we will be increasingly immersed in virtuality, It’s time for citizenship to be updated at all levels. It is now a question of civic education, as indispensable as knowing how to properly separate waste collection.