How Russian disinformation could skew EU election — and whether Europe can fight it

EU Confidential

POLITICO

Politics, News Commentary, News

4.4 • 175 Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2024

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ursula von der Leyen made a promise this week: if she secures another term as president of the European Commission, she will prioritize beefing up the EU's defenses against malicious disinformation from Moscow. It's a top-of-agenda issue for many in Brussels and across the bloc, with less than a month until the European election and hostile actors using sophisticated tools such as generative AI. In this episode, host Sarah Wheaton and her guests unpack some of the latest examples of interference from the Kremlin, such as sharing AI-generated deepfake videos of politicians or cloning the voices of public figures to impersonate them. Sarah is joined by Mark Scott, POLITICO's chief technology correspondent, and Jakub Kalensky, deputy director of the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Helsinki. They also discuss what's behind Europe's modest successes in countering Russian disinformation campaigns. Further reading: Moldova fights to free itself from Russia’s AI-powered disinformation machine by Mark Scott Deepfakes, distrust and disinformation: Welcome to the AI election by Mark Scott Spot the deepfake: The AI tools undermining our own eyes and ears by Mark Scott Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Peggy 16.
0:01.0	My name is Paul Heyman, special counsel to Roman Raines and the Bloodlines Wise Man.
0:07.0	Step out of the ropes and onto the island in WW2K25, an epic WWE themed world ruled by the one and only Roman reigns.
0:19.0	The return of promos plus intergender matches, my GM goes multiplayer, and more.
0:25.5	WW2K25, available March 14th pre-order now. So there's this trend in journalism these days.
0:32.8	You play a deep fake of the host's voice to show everyone just how realistic this AI-generated content
0:38.4	is becoming.
0:40.9	I'm Sarah Wheaton, host of EU Confidential, and my producer Dionys and I debated doing this
0:47.2	to open this week's episode.
0:48.9	We considered having the deep fake say something slightly off, but not totally unbelievable.
0:53.9	But then we also
0:55.1	worried, what if people actually believe it? So as you just heard, the AI still has some
1:03.9	learning to do before my cloned voice sounds more like me. Gotta say, I'm kind of disappointed.
1:09.1	I was hoping to maybe take next week off. Then again, I guess
1:13.0	I should be relieved. Looks like my job is safe for now. But only for now. It's not actually that far
1:20.1	off, and it's kind of creepy. So we tried this for fun, but around the EU, this is a serious issue.
1:27.8	In this episode of EU Confidential, we're looking into disinformation that's being spread
1:31.8	across the block less than a month before the European election in June.
1:36.0	We're talking classic disinformation tools like sharing a fake news, but also newer techniques
1:41.5	like AI-generated deep fake videos, or indeed the cloning of public
1:46.2	figures' voices to impersonate them.
1:48.9	For Brussels, this amounts to hybrid warfare.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from POLITICO, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of POLITICO and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.