One click is a step to liability for distributing deep fakes

As you know, the closer the elections, the more they try to destabilize Belarus.

Thus, more and more unreliable information appears on the Internet. The goal is to destabilize the situation. The media space is rapidly changing with the development of technology. Now even a schoolchild can generate a deep fake with the help of artificial intelligence: special programs allow you to synthesize a voice that is difficult to distinguish from a real one.

And in the hands of professional political strategists, this is an extremely dangerous weapon.

Video and audio recordings in which the faces and voices of politicians are replaced with others with amazing realism have become one of the offensive tools in the information confrontation.

Today, any public figure can be put into the mouth of odious or radical statements that he has never made. One of the main consequences of the spread of such deep fake is the undermining of trust and the polarization of public opinion. In some cases, they are used to sow discord in interstate relations.

Recently, similar material has been actively distributed on the Internet on behalf of the press secretary of the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, Natalya Eismont.

Fake post: "In connection with the rumors that have spread about the alleged provision of asylum to the former leader of the Syrian Arab Republic Bashar al-Assad on the territory of the Republic of Belarus, we declare that the allegations are groundless and do not correspond to reality. We do not expect any guests, especially political exiles of this kind."

The importance of a fake is extremely difficult to overestimate in the context of an attempt to destabilize the political situation. A striking example, which has already entered textbooks on color revolutions, is the incident that occurred in Tunisia.

On December 17, 2010, illegal fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire. The media presented the situation as a fight against injustice and a corrupt regime. The day before, the man's stall with vegetables and fruits was confiscated, and municipal inspector Fedia Hamdi allegedly slapped him. In the Arab world, such an act by a woman would be the highest form of insult. The man's suicide provoked mass protests.

The incident served as the cause of a coup d'etat and became the starting point for the so-called Arab Spring - a series of uprisings that engulfed most of the Arab world. According to various estimates, they took about a million lives, tens of millions became refugees. In the end, it turned out that the whole situation was based on outright lies. Already under the new government in Tunisia, Fedia Hamdi was found innocent and released, with all charges dropped. There was no slap in the face. Deep fake technologies significantly increase such threats.

Andrey Krivosheyev, Chairman of the Belarusian Union of Journalists:

"Such manipulations, such lies, such deep fakes are aimed at destructively influencing our lives. To make us feel fear or other emotions. To blackmail, steal money, cheat, set people up, provoke discord within a particular family, within a work collective or between different social groups of our society. And this is another serious danger posed by high-tech deep fakes created using neural network platforms."

Imagine a situation in which a video appears on the eve of an election in which one of the candidates makes offensive or aggressive statements. It will definitely cause a wide resonance and distribution on social networks. Emotional content, like hot cakes, will be carried away by all who want to be the first among those who share it. And now you are an accomplice in the spread of disinformation.

Andrei Krivosheev, Chairman of the Belarusian Union of Journalists:

"This requires people to have the highest level of information literacy, competence, political and civic culture. This requires people to use their life experience, cool mind and become, in fact, fact-checkers, that is, those who check information. Of course, Belarusian society demonstrates a high level of information literacy, but we still have a lot to do."

It is important to remember that if the news causes you excessive emotions, most likely you are being manipulated. One click is step toward liability. And in many ways, we are talking about global and irreparable changes to which this can lead the entire country.