One of the biggest critics in Washington of "deepfakes," or artificial intelligence-generated videos and images, is Minnesota's U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D).
Now, she's found herself the victim of just that after a video circulated across social media showing Klobuchar opining about the Sydney Sweeney "jeans" ad that drew so much controversy. When Klobuchar heard about this video of her getting so much attention, she clicked went to X and clicked it the video that already had more than a million views.
(Video here: warning, graphic language)
"That’s when I heard my voice — but certainly not me — spewing a vulgar and absurd critique of an ad campaign for jeans featuring Sydney Sweeney," Klobuchar wrote this week in a New York Times op-ed.
Last December, Klobuchar and Senator Ted Cruz (R- Texas) celebrated the passage their bipartisan bill in the Senate that looks to crack down on explicit artificial intelligence images online. Thursday morning at the Minnesota State Fair, Klobuchar told WCCO's Vineeta Sawkar that their bill should just be the start of cracking down on a disturbing new way to exploit people.
"Ted Cruz, he just texted me this morning, he and I worked together on a bill to take non-consensual porn, off the internet," Klobuchar said on the WCCO Morning News. "It's just been horrific. Kids get their faces put on bodies that aren't theirs or maybe they send a picture of themselves to someone they think is going to be a girlfriend or a boyfriend. So at the inauguration, I talked to President Trump and Melania about it. We'd already gotten it through the Senate, Ted and I had. They helped over in the House and we got that bill done and it's signed into law and it's the first bill that tells those big old platforms that have trillions of dollars, you have to take this stuff down in 48 hours."
Klobuchar says while she was disturbed to find that video of herself online, her story is not nearly as bad as others.
"Things where like, Secretary of State Marco Rubio's voice was cloned and the person that wasn't him called foreign leaders," she says. "And they thought it was him. Or members of Congress. But my story was, we had a hearing on privacy. We really need a federal privacy law. Senator (Marsha) Blackburn (TN) is very concerned. There were no viral sort of partisan moments, and the next day I'm like, 'oh wow, that hearing did really well. Look, it's all over social media. Cool.' And I click on it and I realized it's a completely made up video."
Klobuchar says one of her real staff members was standing behind her in the video.
"It's me sitting there, but it was this odd thing where they had me opining on Sydney Sweeney, the actress, her jeans, there's a jeans campaign," the senator explains. "And they had me saying horrible things about people and about people's bodies, and it looks my mouth is moving to the words. You think it's me and it, of course, is not me. So I immediately start writing letters, making calls and I think Meta ended up putting 'digitally altered' on it which was helpful. TikTok took it down, but X wouldn't do anything and it got over 1.5 million views.
According to Klobuchar, when a video or image like this get posted, studies have shown that even when people know it's fake, most people still believe it is real, pointing towards a public consiousness that lags behind where technology is taking us.
"Even when they think it's fake it alters their image of who you are," she explains. "So that is really bad for our democracy and it's not just elected officials. Imagine if a bank CEO, there's a fake video and then it creates a run on a bank? Or a influencer that people love tells little kids to do drugs? Or if a president of the United States, a fake video was made and other countries believe it? So there's got to be some rules like they've done in other countries."
For those that point towards the Consitutional freedoms we have, the freedom of expression, the freedom of speech, Klobuchar says there is an easy answer.
"At least there is nothing wrong with requiring these things, if they are substantially digitally altered, with saying 'altered digitally' or 'altered by AI,' so at least when you look at a video you know that's not really the principle at my kids' school. That is not really my son, because it'll say that on it," Klobuchar told WCCO. "Otherwise, in my mind, some of this stuff like we got done on the pornography should just have to come down. It's lies. It's not really the people and it's gonna result in scams."
The actual technology, Klobuchar adds, is also going to do a lot of good. Certainly, there are positive aspects to artificial intelligence.
"It doesn't mean I'm against this technology," she explains. "It's gonna cure diseases. It's gonna do some incredible stuff. It just means all other democracies are starting to put rules in place and in our country we're just like, 'oh, some of the tech companies don't like it, so let's not do it.' We just cannot have that view of this. We have to actually be willing to do things."