Comment by trompetenaccoun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trompetenaccoun | Hacker News Reader

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trompetenaccoun

The article doesn't say anything other than you're saying.

>Iranian state-backed hackers interrupted TV streaming services in the United Arab Emirates to broadcast a deepfake newsreader delivering a report on the war in Gaza, according to analysts at Microsoft.

>The tech company said a hacking operation run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, a key branch of the Iranian armed forces, had disrupted streaming platforms in the UAE with an AI-generated news broadcast branded “For Humanity”.

>The fake news anchor introduced unverified images that claimed to show Palestinians injured and killed from Israeli military operations in Gaza. Analysts at Microsoft said the hacking group, known as Cotton Sandstorm, published videos on the Telegram messaging platform showing it hacking into three online streaming services and disrupting news channels with the fake newscaster.

As far as verifying things goes, yes, that's how it should work. I'm no fan of the Guardian by any means but there has been a ton of misinformation, old videos from Assad's forces bombing civilians passed off as Palestinians getting bombed, that kind of stuff. The entire conflict is an all-out propaganda war in addition to the physical fighting. Thinking that the Islamic Republic of all regimes wouldn't lie about the Israel-Palestine conflict is absurd. Also as an aside, the Guardian itself is regularly accused of having anti-Israel bias. They're not exactly known to push pro Israel talking points, to put it mildly. It's a bit like accusing Al Jazeera of having an anti Gaza bias.

The headline seems intended to mislead people. Most people who read this headline are going to interpret it as Iran hacked a station and delivered 'fake news.' Hence, the original post in this thread we're responding in. For some contrast see an identical story subject here. [1] That story's about China's AI newscaster and there they just used normal terms like 'ai anchor.'

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/09/worlds-first-a...

Yeah, sorry, no. The Guardian is writing in a way obviously intended to make careless readers (which means most readers) think that the whole video is known to be AI-generated. No, they don't actually say that; they invite the reader to believe it while carefully not saying it.

No professional writer would do that by accident. The writing is very obviously slanted in a way meant to mislead the audience. I don't know what their motives for misleading people may be. I suspect it's mostly to sex up the story by exaggerating ther sensational "AI" angle more, because, hey, who cares if you escalate a conflict and get more people killed when there are clicks and views and ad impressions to be had.

But the fact that they are intentionally misleading people is evident in their own words.

As for the actual video, it's trivial to find stuff that will generate the talking head for you, and they probably did that so they wouldn't have to have any of their own people on camera. That's zero evidence in either direction about the veracity of the important parts, even though the Guardian is trying to use it to cast doubt on those parts.

The "unverified images" themselves may or may not be real, but almost certainly are NOT AI-generated. As you yourself noticed, it's still easier, even today to just use old stuff or stuff from other wars.

And honestly there's going to be more than enough real evil done in any war that you could make a video like that if you had some kind of omniscient camera.

I don’t agree that this is “obviously intended” to make people think it’s AI. Theres lot of possibilities besides AI; it could be old footage, the parties could be misidentified, it could be from a different conflict, it could be taken out of context. “Unverified” is a pretty standard way to characterize a video when you haven’t vetted its source.

What were the images of? Why doesn't the Guardian describe them instead of just putting in a bunch of weasel words.

> the Guardian itself is regularly accused of having anti-Israel bias

That's definitely not been the case since Oct 7th. They've been extremely pro-Israel, just like all of the MSM.

Yep. Even the censoring and firing of the last of their decent cartoonists, Steve Bell, shows the Guardian can't even tolerate off-message satire when doing their masters' bidding.[0] They were half-decent under Rubsbridger, but how far have they fallen. [0] https://www.belltoons.co.uk/hotoffpress

They've been extremely pro-Israel

This is wildly overdrawn and lacking in substantial basis.

Though I'm sure there are many who believe that any source besides Electronic Intifada (or equivalent to it in tone and selective reporting) is "extremely pro-Israel".

The lie is in the title: it is written in a way that makes it sound like the entire piece that was broadcast was generated by AI, which is not the case.

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