Venezuelan government used AI-generated avatars from Synthesia to create fake news videos promoting pro-government narratives about economic recovery and tourism, which were widely distributed on social media and state television.
The Venezuelan government used AI-generated avatars named Noah and Daren from Synthesia software to create fake news videos for the 'House of News' YouTube channel. These avatars, created using artificial intelligence, presented misleading information about Venezuela's economy, including claims about high hotel occupancy during Carnival season and $17 million in profits from the Caribbean Series baseball tournament. The videos received hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, went viral on TikTok as paid advertising, and were broadcast on state television Venezolana de Television. Synthesia, a London-based AI company founded in 2017, offers avatar creation services for a few dollars per month subscription, allowing users to generate realistic videos with voices in over 100 languages. The company banned the Venezuelan client after discovering the misuse and implemented new restrictions including banning news report-style content and adding digital watermarks. The fake news campaign was part of a broader Venezuelan government propaganda operation that includes paid Twitter users who receive bonuses of $3-5 through the Sistema Patria platform for promoting government hashtags. ProBox Observatory documented that 96.5% of pro-government messages come from automated accounts or bots, with over 10 million manipulated messages generated in one week.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
Using AI systems to conduct large-scale disinformation campaigns, malicious surveillance, or targeted and sophisticated automated censorship and propaganda, with the aim of manipulating political processes, public opinion, and behavior.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed