The Venezuelan regime has made use of it artificial intelligence create Avatars of journalists who spread positive news for the government and misinform about the reality of the country.
The YouTube site House of News in Spanish, an alleged newscast in English, recently published several news stories narrated by these characters that were created with Synthesia softwarewhich features a hundred multiracial faces created using cybernetic codes to show a positive face of Nicolás Maduro’s regime and that the Venezuelan economy is not “so devastated,” according to a note in the El País newspaper.
The fake reporters’ videos were broadcast by the state-owned Venezolana de Televisión, the Chavista regime’s main broadcaster.
In one of these, a blonde “journalist” reports that hotel facilities are full during the Carnival celebrations and that eight million Venezuelans have already made holiday plans to travel to the country’s main tourist destinations, which would not be possible if the Venezuelan economy would be depressed.
Another “report” shows the profits made Caribbean series, recently held in Caracas. According to the avatar, approximately $10 million in tickets were sold to see the baseball games; Up to seven million were generated in food and drink at the stadium, and between four and six million left for hotel accommodation.
Among the avatars offered by the application, according to El País, there is something for everyone: you can choose characters dressed as TV presenters, but there are also others dressed as doctors and executives, with a construction helmet, a woman with hijab, a chef and even Santa Claus.
Alleged journalists Noah and Dave, now employed by Venezuela, were used in a pro-China disinformation campaign a few months ago, according to a recent complaint by The New York Times.
Synthesia only requires a few dollars a month subscription to enter a written script and the software to create the ultra-realistic video with voices available in over a hundred languages and accents, synchronizing the voice with the movement of the avatar’s lips.
According to the company’s website, which was created in 2017 by entrepreneurs and researchers from universities in the United States and Europe, the prototype catalog consists of “digital twins,” actors who sold their images to be used in these characters.
Chavismo has already resorted to bots and Troops of tweeters funded by the regime to spread labels and “rare” talk on social networks, but now it has gone a step further and created its own news site in English to deny the existence of a Venezuelan economic crisis.
Through armies of real tweeters and automated accounts Through the Twitter account of the Ministry of Communications and Information of Venezuela, the label that is positioned in the networks is published every day.
“This is done with the intention of making certain narratives believe in international public opinion, such as that of the hashtag #LasSancionesMatanSalario, which already has a million messages this week, but if you compare it to independent media, you know it is not like that . Mainly it’s about creating propaganda, diverting focus, changing the narrative,” said Estefanía Da Silva, general coordinator of the ProBox observatory, which monitors socio-political trends on social networks in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and El Salvador.
More than 95 percent of the messages come from automated accounts or possible bots, generating millions of interactions on the networks, such as the news rain driven by the hashtag #LasSancionesSonContraElPueblo.