As demonstrations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids continue in Los Angeles, misleading videos, conspiracies and false claims have spread on social media.
Many of the posts recycle longstanding conspiracy theories, which have often been revived during past episodes of civil unrest. Some posts have made claims that wealthy individuals engineered or financed the protests, and they have racked up millions of views online.
Some posts exaggerate the unrest, using videos of past demonstrations to depict a city overwhelmed by violence. In fact, clashes since the current protests began Friday have remained largely confined to parts of Los Angeles County.
...
One widely shared video of vandalized police cars set ablaze, which was posted by far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas on Sunday, was originally from news coverage of May 2020 protests in response to the death of George Floyd.
...Amid the recycled imagery, authentic pictures of National Guard members sleeping on the floor of a federal building in Los Angeles this week were falsely described as old or unauthentic.
The images were initially published by the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday and republished by California Gov. Gavin Newsom on X, who said they served as proof that the deployment was poorly planned, and claimed the soldiers were "without fuel, food, water or a place to sleep."
Some social media users said the images were old and depicted soldiers at previous deployments. Grok, X's AI chatbot, determined the images were likely from Afghanistan in 2021.
However, the images are authentic. Using images published by the U.S. Northern Command and other videos posted to social media, CBS News independently confirmed the images were taken from the loading dock area of the Robert Young Federal Building.
Catherine Kim at Politico:
The latest rollout of accessible AI video generators presents unique challenges to the truth — and public perception of it — because videos are “more powerful as a medium in terms of convincing people of reality,” said Jamie Cohen, an assistant professor at CUNY Queens College who studies internet literacy.
“Pictures are easily manipulated,” he said. “That idea has been there. But when it comes to videos, we’ve just been trained as an individual society to believe videos. Up until recently, we haven’t really had the opportunity to assume videos could be faked at the scale that it’s being faked at this point.”
It’s not just the sheer amount of slop that is filling social media feeds that’s posing a problem. It’s the ability to visually manipulate scenes to fit the creator’s political agenda that is making it so much harder to decipher the truth during the L.A. protests. Consider these completely fake AI-generated videos posted over the past few days: one of a hypocritical protester who preaches peace and then throws a molotov cocktail. Or another of a man screaming “Viva Mexico,” but then cowering away from an officer who says he will take him to Mexico. These clips aren’t just delivering conservative talking points either: This one emanates from the left, featuring a young man delivering a heartfelt speech about standing with his community and fighting injustice.
Until recently, the concern with manipulated images has been related to their ability to misinform a crowd and sway public opinion. But a growing body of research proves that not much can change people’s minds — not even AI misinformation. What the technology can do, however, is reinforce preexisting beliefs, leaving people impervious to actual facts.
