EDITORIAL — If it’s not the truth, it’s a lie

Senator Ronald dela Rosa recently came under fire for sharing video of students expressing their support for beleaguered Vice President Sara Duterte Carpio.

Because the students weren’t real, their sentiments weren’t real, even the interview wasn’t real. It was a video produced by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

It was bad enough that a senator of the republic shared something that was fake online, but it gets worse, the vice president herself said she sees nothing wrong with it.

“There’s probably no problem with sharing an AI video in support of me, as long as it’s not being used for profit,” Carpio said.

There is no doubt that Carpio enjoys tremendous support from many people, but in this particular instance the students, the sentiment, the interview wasn’t a show of support at all because it was faked.

For one high official to pass something false as the truth and for another to say she is okay with something like that is quite concerning.

If something is not real then it’s fake. If it’s not the truth then it’s an untruth. What’s another word for that? A lie. If something false is being advertised as the truth then that is straightforward disinformation. It is practically fake news.

Take note that there is nothing wrong with AI-generated videos per se. Many of them make for good and harmless fun, like the AI that makes mermaids or mermen out of everyone, or the one that lets you ride any creature you can imagine, or the one that animates photos of long-lost loved ones, or the one that makes people in an image “kiss”.

But then again, this is where the fun ends. There are those AI programs that can be used to generate practically anything. Remember that after the recent earthquake in Myanmar, many people made AI videos that they passed off as events recorded during the disaster? That flood of fake videos was a disaster in itself and a false representation of what happened.

There is a consequence for spreading something fake. When something false is being dressed up as the truth, it misleads people. It erodes the public’s trust in what is real. They won’t know what to believe anymore --either that or they will totally fall for something that isn’t true.