(CNN) — Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was interviewed, joined the controversial debate on Wednesday about allegations of the use of artificial intelligence to misinformation in Venezuela. The President criticized a memo published in Spain’s El País alleging that avatars posing as news anchors are spreading false and unverified information about the South American country’s economic situation.
Maduro reacted ironically, assuring that it was a robot while imitating the mechanical movement of these creations. “They accuse us of being robots, of not existing… No, it’s not artificial intelligence, it’s popular intelligence, it’s revolutionary intelligence.”
CNN was able to prove that such TV presenters do not exist and that it is not a real news program. On the Synthesia website, CNN identified Andy, Thomas and Emma as avatars serving any user wishing to create content.
These three avatars are the same ones appearing in videos about Venezuela’s alleged economic recovery published by House of News, an alleged agency that appears to have had a YouTube account as recently as January 26 of this year.
CNN has so far made unsuccessful attempts to contact those responsible for the account. It is also unclear who is funding the campaign. Similarly, CNN contacted Synthesia to learn more about this work and if their client is the government of Venezuela. There was no answer.
CNN also asked the Venezuelan government if it was related to these videos, but so far they have not responded.
The story of those vicissitudes, which spoke of Venezuela’s supposed economic recovery without giving numbers, went viral this week, highlighting journalists’ and pundits’ concerns about the use of artificial intelligence to spread propaganda and disinformation in a country with a very weak system of independent media.
For example, the NGO Cazadores de Fake News explained that videos with avatars cause much more confusion. “First a fake source called ‘House of News’ is created, which is not a news show but pretends to be one, and a fake anchor is also created to give it credibility. They are common misinformation practices,” added its director, Adrián González.
For his part, the coordinator of the C-informa coalition, Andrés Cañizales, assured in an interview with CNN that the production of these videos is “not excessively expensive, nor excessively difficult, nor excessively slow”. He said it was a tool now available not only to governments but to anyone else trying to spread misinformation.
factchequeado.com Editor-in-Chief Tamoa Calzadilla confirmed that it is an improvement in misinformation techniques and that it is nothing more than deep forgery. Calzadilla described it as “a manipulation through digital techniques such as artificial intelligence to create moving images with audio and characters that are not real but are shown as such in order to confuse and deceive the public”.
According to Víctor Amaya, director of the newspapers Tal cual and Espaja.com, this type of campaign “makes more noise in the public debate in Venezuela”. “If a person can’t trust anything that happens on the networks, then they don’t trust everyone. From the most consolidated media, from those that are not, from those that are new”.
The story of avatars Andy, Thomas and Enma tells of Venezuela’s economic recovery. This optimism contrasts with the Ecoanalítica reports. In January this year, according to the company, there was a 17.5% decline in the sales volume index compared to the same month in 2022.