Hillary Clinton discussed how she was a victim of disinformation campaigns during the 2016 election that spread false narratives about her online.
She warned that advances in artificial intelligence, like deepfakes, will make future election interference even more sophisticated and difficult to detect.
Both Clinton and FBI Director Christopher Wray have expressed concerns that foreign adversaries and other malign actors will use new technologies like AI and deepfakes to meddle in US elections, including the 2024 cycle, by generating and spreading realistic fake content online.
“I don’t think any of us understood it. I did not understand it. I can tell you, my campaign did not understand it. Their, you know, the so-called ‘Dark Web’ was filled with these kinds of memes and stories and videos of all sorts…portraying me in all kinds of… less than flattering ways,” Clinton said. “And we knew something’s going on, but we didn’t understand the full extent of the very clever way in which it was insinuated into social media.”
This poses major challenges for identifying and mitigating foreign influence operations that aim to undermine democracy.
“There are people today who think I’ve done all these terrible things because they saw it on the internet. And they saw it on the internet in their Facebook feed or some, you know, Twitter this or Snapchat that. They were, you know, following the breadcrumbs,” she said.
“What we’re talking about now is the leap in technology that we’re dealing with. You know, they had all kinds of videos of people looking like me, but weren’t me, and they had to keep whoever that woman was with her back to the camera enough so that they couldn’t actually… be found out,” Clinton said. “Now they can just go ahead, they can take me.
“I’ve had, you know, people who are students and experts in this tell me… because they’ve got such a library of stuff about me, they’re using it to practice on and see how more sophisticated they can get. So I am worried because, you know, having defamatory videos about you is no fun. I can tell you that. But having them in a way that you really can’t make the distinction… you have no idea whether it’s true or not, that is of a totally different level of threat.”
“This election cycle, the U.S. will face more adversaries moving at a faster pace and enabled by new technology,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said.
“Advances in generative AI, for instance, are lowering the barrier to entry, making it easier for both more and less sophisticated foreign adversaries to engage in malign influence while making foreign influence efforts by players both old and new, more realistic and more difficult to detect.”
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