TikTok video, former President Barack Obama — or a voice eerily like his — can be heard defending himself against an explosive new conspiracy theory about the sudden death of his former chef.
«While I cannot comprehend the basis of the allegations made against me,» the voice says, «I urge everyone to remember the importance of unity, understanding and not rushing to judgments.»
In fact, the voice did not belong to the former president. It was a convincing fake, generated by artificial intelligence using sophisticated new tools that can clone real voices to create AI puppets with a few clicks of a mouse.
The technology used to create AI voices has gained traction and wide acclaim since companies such as ElevenLabs released a slate of new tools late last year. Since then, audio fakes have rapidly become a new weapon on the online misinformation battlefield, threatening to turbocharge political disinformation before the 2024 election by giving creators a way to put their conspiracy theories into the mouths of celebrities, newscasters and politicians.
The fake audio adds to the AI-generated threats from «deepfake» videos, humanlike writing from ChatGPT and images from services such as Midjourney.
Disinformation watchdogs have noticed the number of videos containing AI voices has increased as content producers and misinformation peddlers adopt the novel tools. Social