Artificial intelligence, apparently, is the new \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blaming AI is an increasingly popular strategy for politicians seeking to dodge responsibility for something embarrassing \u2014 among others. AI isn\u2019t a person, after all. It can\u2019t leak or file suit. It does make mistakes, a credibility problem that makes it hard to determine fact from fiction in the age of mis- and disinformation. <\/p>\n
And when truth is hard to discern, the untruthful benefit, analysts say. The phenomenon is widely known as \u201cthe liar\u2019s dividend.\u201d <\/p>\n
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump endorsed the practice<\/a>. Asked about viral footage showing someone tossing something out an upper-story White House window, the president replied, \u201cNo, that\u2019s probably AI\u201d \u2014 after his press team had indicated to reporters that the video was real. <\/p>\n But Trump, known for insisting the truth is what he says it is, declared himself all in on the AI-blaming phenomenon. <\/p>\n \u201cIf something happens that\u2019s really bad,\u201d he told reporters, \u201cmaybe I\u2019ll have to just blame AI.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s not alone.<\/p>\n AI is getting blamed \u2014 sometimes fairly, sometimes not<\/p>\n On the same day in Caracas, Venezuelan Communications Minister Freddy \u00d1\u00e1\u00f1ez questioned the veracity of a Trump administration video it said showed a U.S. strike on a vessel in Caribbean that targeted Venezuela\u2019s Tren de Aragua gang and killed 11. A video of the strike posted to Truth Social shows a long, multi-engine speedboat at sea when a bright flash of light bursts over it. The boat is then briefly seen covered in flames. <\/p>\n \u201cBased on the video provided, it is very likely that it was created using Artificial Intelligence,\u201d \u00d1\u00e1\u00f1ez said on his Telegram account, describing \u201calmost cartoonish animation.\u201d <\/p>\n Blaming AI can at times be a compliment. (\u201cHe\u2019s like an AI-generated player,\u201d tennis player Alexander Bublik said of his U.S. Open opponent Jannik Sinner\u2019s talent on ESPN<\/a> ). But when used by the powerful, the practice, experts say, can be dangerous.<\/p>\n Digital forensics expert Hany Farid warned for years about the growing capabilities of AI \u201cdeepfake\u201d images, voices and video to aid in fraud or political disinformation campaigns, but there was always a deeper problem.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always contended that the larger issue is that when you enter this world where anything can be fake, then nothing has to be real,\u201d said Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. \u201cYou get to deny any reality because all you have to say is, \u2018It\u2019s a deepfake.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n That wasn\u2019t so a decade or two ago, he noted. Trump issued a rare apology (\u201cif anyone was offended\u201d)<\/a> in 2016 for his comments about touching women without their consent on the notorious \u201cAccess Hollywood\u201d tape. His opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, said she was wrong<\/a> to call some of his supporters \u201ca basket of deplorables.\u201d<\/p>\n Toby Walsh, chief scientist and professor of AI at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said blaming AI leads to problems not just in the digital world but the real world as well. <\/p>\n \u201cIt leads to a dark future where we no longer hold politicians (or anyone else) accountable,\u201d Walsh said in an email. \u201c\u201dIt used to be that if you were caught on tape saying something, you had to own it. This is no longer the case.\u201d<\/p>\n Contemplating the \u2018liar\u2019s dividend\u2019<\/p>\n Danielle K. Citron of the Boston University School of Law and Robert Chesney of the University of Texas foresaw the issue in research published in 2019. In it, they describe what they called \u201cthe liar\u2019s dividend.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf the public loses faith in what they hear and see and truth becomes a matter of opinion, then power flows to those whose opinions are most prominent\u2014empowering authorities along the way,\u201d they wrote in the California Law Review. \u201cA skeptical public will be primed to doubt the authenticity of real audio and video evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n Polling suggests many Americans are wary about AI. About half of U.S. adults said the increased use of AI in daily life made them feel \u201cmore concerned than excited,\u201d according to a Pew Research Center<\/a> poll from August 2024. Pew\u2019s polling indicates that people have become more concerned about the increased use of AI in recent years.<\/p>\n Most U.S. adults appear to distrust AI-generated information when they know that\u2019s the source, according to a Quinnipiac poll<\/a> from April. About three-quarters said they could only trust the information generated by AI \u201csome of the time\u201d or \u201chardly ever.\u201d In that poll, about 6 in 10 U.S. adults said they were \u201cvery concerned\u201d about political leaders using AI to distribute fake or misleading information.<\/p>\n They have reason, and Trump has played a sizable role in muddying trust and truth<\/a>. <\/p>\n Trump\u2019s history of misinformation and even lies<\/a> to suit his narrative predates AI. He\u2019s famous for the use of \u201cfake news,\u201d a buzz term now widely known to denote skepticism about media reports. Leslie Stahl of CBS\u2019 \u201c60 Minutes\u201d has said that Trump told her off camera<\/a> in 2016 that he tries to \u201cdiscredit\u201d journalists so that when they report negative stories, they won\u2019t be believed.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s claim on Tuesday that AI was behind the White House window video wasn\u2019t his first attempt to blame AI. In 2023, he insisted that the anti-Trump Lincoln Project used AI in a video to make him \u201clook bad.\u201d<\/p>\n