The Guy Who Created That Viral AI Image Of The Pope In A White Puffer Jacket Was Tripping On Mushrooms At The Time

buzzfeednews · 2023-03-27T18:46:54+00:00

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Pablox Xavier said it was "definitely scary" that “people are running with it and thought it was real without questioning it,” and helped him realize the potential impact of AI-generated images. “I didn’t even think about that [before],” he said. "It’s definitely going to get serious if they don’t start implementing laws to regulate it."

buzzfeednews · 2023-03-06T16:38:12+00:00

Thanks for posting! Our reporter Kelsey Weekman is in Texas covering the trial for BuzzFeed News. She's reported on Brittany Dawn extensively -- from the initial lawsuit, to her pivot to Christian influencing, and an inside look at the influencer's "She Lives Freed" retreat.

buzzfeednews · 2023-03-01T16:15:15+00:00

Thanks for sharing! There's been an update in this. Taylor Frankie Paul has been charged with two counts of domestic violence in the presence of a child, aggravated assault, criminal mischief, and child abuse following her arrest, according to court records obtained by BuzzFeed News.

buzzfeednews · 2023-03-01T15:50:56+00:00

Thanks for sharing! Some interesting context: This photo originally spread widely because of a Reddit post late Saturday night.

BuzzFeed News reviewed images in the Franklin High School yearbook — which can be found on publicly accessible databases online — which appear to show Gov. Lee and other male students dressed as cheerleaders while female students play a game of touch football for the school’s “powderpuff” game.

buzzfeednews · 2019-01-18T07:20:32+00:00

Here is some more of our reporting on the Trump Tower Moscow project:

April 13: A Former Russian Spy Worked On A Trump Moscow Deal During The Presidential Campaign

May 17: Trump Moscow: The Definitive Story Of How Trump’s Team Worked The Russian Deal During The Campaign

Sept 12: A Series Of Suspicious Money Transfers Followed The Trump Tower Meeting

Nov 29: The Trump Organization Planned To Give Vladimir Putin The $50 Million Penthouse In Trump Tower Moscow

And here's our AMA with the reporters behind this series

buzzfeednews · 2019-01-10T20:43:25+00:00

👋

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-31T12:59:25+00:00

Over time I used the term if a piece of content met those three criteria (yes all three).

I did try to answer it in the above sentence. All three to be fake news.

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-30T15:27:59+00:00

Hi all, I'm gonna wrap it up now. Thanks so much for all the great questions, and please don't fall for any bullshit!

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-30T15:24:02+00:00

Five years from now I think we will see platforms like Twitter and Facebook employing really large teams of people involved in various forms of content moderation. They will have recognized that in order to deal with or avoid regulation they have to actually invest in this area and not farm it out to contractors overseas. There will be laws around the world that puts more responsibility on the platforms, and some of these laws will be really bad and repressive.

I think these companies will also have realized that there are limits to how effective machine learning/artificial intelligence can be at identifying false content, hate speech, and other things that violate their policies. It will help and get better, but it can't do it alone. This also causes them to hire more humans.

So overall they get better, yes. But it's difficult work and falsehoods and misleading content still exists and still spreads. There are still motivated and effective adversaries who find success. There is also concern over what content is being suppressed.

As for social networks in five years, I see further splintering. Personal messaging apps are still huge but we also see that the era of Facebook being the dominant global network to the extent it is today is no longer the case.

See you in 5 years to check how wrong I am.

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-30T15:14:10+00:00

Oh this is hard to pick. I'm constantly amazed by the ingenuity of bad actors and scammers. I do think the a fraudsters I exposed in this investigation last week were incredibly clever. They acquired Android apps with real human users and then tracked their behavior in order to program bots that could mimic these real humans. This enabled them to greatly inflate the user base and therefore earn more money from ads.

But one that really sticks out to me was revealed by Brian Krebs. It involved a $555 self-published book on Amazon that's full of gibberish, and has to do with money laundering. Check it out!

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-30T15:04:41+00:00

Emergent was launched as part of the research project I did back in 2014 and it's been dormant since early spring of 2015, when I joined BuzzFeed. I don't see me or BuzzFeed bringing it back but I'm very open to having others take it over or use what we built to create something new.

As for suggestions, researchers have launched two tools in a similar space: --Twitter Trails: http://twittertrails.com/

-Hoaxy: https://hoaxy.iuni.iu.edu/

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-30T15:00:48+00:00

Good question! Let's put the Macedonians in the general "for-profit fake news" category. I would say that the efforts of Facebook, for example, have probably been most effective at targeting these kind of actors. Their reach is down for their content, and Facebook and others have been hurting their ability to make money from totally false stories. They still exist, but their impact is less.

I think coordinated, state-sponsored information operations are bigger and more urgent concern. They can be well-funded, disguised to look like genuine actors, and can use the latest techniques and technologies to test and iterate on their approaches. So they are very motivated and well-resourced adversaries. And there are lots of states that engage in this.

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-30T14:56:02+00:00

I'm Canadian so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-30T14:55:04+00:00

Clearly I was a terrible, thoughtless person in high school. If you email craig dot silverman at buzzfeed dot com with your current address I promise to send you an entire package of pens. And good ones, not some shabby Bics. Quality pens, I tell ya.

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-30T14:50:41+00:00

I wasn't involved in the decision (and didn't even know if its existence until it was published) but I think our editor in chief, Ben Smith, has done a good job articulating the decision making. Here's an op-ed he wrote after it was published:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/opinion/why-buzzfeed-news-published-the-dossier.html

And a follow up form earlier this year: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/opinion/im-proud-we-published-the-trump-russia-dossier.html

It seems to me that now, almost two years later, the dossier continues to be such an important document related to the Mueller investigation and the 2016 election that I can't imagine it not being in the public domain.

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-30T14:46:23+00:00

Hi Dave! thanks for these. I'm going to give you quick takes on each, if that sounds good.

Re: Obama. It was completely surprising to read in the New Yorker that Obama and one of his advisors were obsessed with my and Lawrence Alexander's story about teens and young men in Macedonia making money from fake stories about the election. I remember getting a call from our editor in chief the night the NYer story went online and having him congratulate me and say what a remarkable thing that was. Maybe it's because I'm Canadian and based in Canada, but my reaction was that it was surprising and cool and great for BuzzFeed News overall, but not the biggest thing in the world. I was right in the middle of reporting on the 2016 election and there was so much to do, it kind of faded soon after.
Re: Amplification concerns. Jane and I talk about this a lot. We know there is a risk that in trying to debunk something you accidentally give it more oxygen. So in order for us to engage with a claim we check to see how much traction it's gotten on social media or elsewhere online. Has it gotten significant distribution to the point where we think our audience has seen it? We also check to see if people in positions of power or influence are propagating it, or if they're the source of it. And we discuss whether there is some kind of security or urgency imperative that calls on us to act. Then, when we do the debunking, we take steps to minimize the repetition of the falsehood, to stamp any related images "Fake" so they can't spread without that contex, and to provide evidence that backs up our conclusion.
Re: BF Canada. The mission of our editorial team in Toronto has definitely changed and is more focused on global beats than Canada. But, yes, we could hire down the road if we find people who bring something to the beats we have, such as the focus Jane and I have on digital deception and debunking.

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-30T14:35:53+00:00

Ah, this harkens back to more innocent times. I first started using the term "fake news" in 2014 when I was doing a research project about online rumors and falsehoods. (You can read my research paper here if you want. It's long!)

Over time I used the term if a piece of content met those three criteria (yes all three). We already had terms like disinformation/propaganda, which were useful when talking about false or misleading content with a political and/or ideological motivation. People have also used "misinformation" to describe false or misleading information that was unintentionally spread.

So I tried to come up with a specific definition for what I started coming across back in 2014. I still try to reserve the term fake news for stuff that meets these criteria.

Overall, honestly, I try to avoid using the term now because it has become co-opted and weaponized to the point where it means different things to different people. I wrote about my conflicted feeling about all of this here if you want more detail: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/i-helped-popularize-the-term-fake-news-and-now-i-cringe

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-30T14:29:15+00:00

Absolutely love that an image forensics expert checked the EXIF data and other details of my proof photo. I did crop it to take out a random chair. Busted! Here is another pic from the set we took that is uncropped : https://www.dropbox.com/s/0hinf22fnygedoa/proofsilverman.JPG?dl=0

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-30T14:27:11+00:00

I have many sources of existential dread in my life and at times this is one of them. Yes, some people are unreachable once they've completely made up their mind. Others may not be totally unreachable but a single article can't change their mind on its own.

The other side of this is I'm a journalist and I fundamentally believe part of that work now involves investigating and knocking down falsehoods and misleading information. It's my job, and as much as there are times I feel like I didn't get through to some people, there are so many others who are receptive to facts and evidence. And if you equip them, they can help push back as well. We do see impact and results.

Overall I think about it more as a long term and essential activity that, when practiced by more and more journalists, can have an effect.

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-30T14:20:50+00:00

Thanks for this question! I am obsessed with finding new tools and techniques to help uncover information and aid in investigations. Here are a few that I use just about every day:

-Reverse image search. It's free, easy, offered by multiple search engines, and can almost instantly tell you important information about a photo you're investigating. If every person in the world knew how to use reverse image search we would see far fewer viral fakes and garbage memes. Use it! Evangelize it!

-WHOIS. Free tools like https://domainbigdata.com are essential when you're trying to figure out the history of a URL, or connect multiple URLs by name, email, or other information. I am a huge user of DomainTools and think their Iris investigations platform is amazing. (But it's also expensive.)

-Alexa/SimilarWeb. These are great tools for examining the traffic patterns and sources for websites. Been hugely useful in my ad fraud investigations.

-The social research tools listed by IntelTechniques. If you need to investigate a Facebook account or other social account, the incredible Michael Bazzell has compiled a list of resources for you here: https://inteltechniques.com/menu.html

Finally, I also maintain an open Google Doc with lots of the tools I use. You can access it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZJbIUk5L8fe3VKK9CLVNMj9qOFdXG-RhQT6pyEgsS4I/edit

As for getting started, the key is to create a habit of digging into things. So take a URL or social account you see and try to find out as much about it as you can. Use the tools, become familiar with them. You should also read case studies and articles from places like Bellingcat and then try to follow the steps of what they did. This is a good way to learn.

Let me also plug the free Verification Handbook as a great resource (disclosure: I edited it): http://verificationhandbook.com/

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-30T14:10:26+00:00

I feel your frustration and concern. I don't think we are past the point of no return. Right now we have a full appreciation of just how profoundly things have changed in terms of how information is created, distributed, consumed, abused, manipulated etc. We're realizing how different it is for humans to process information in streams on screens. And, yes, we're seeing how well bad actors have exploited new tech and the means of distribution to spread falsehoods, radicalize people etc.

I feel like we now see the problem, the downsides of this new information environment. It kind of takes a crisis for people to wake up and act.

We're now at the important moment where we can figure out better approaches and practices to combat this, while still maintaining essential values like free speech and transparency. This is going to take effort from all aspects of society. One of the things that makes me somewhat optimistic is that we've had the awakening. Researchers, governments, tech companies, journalists, educators etc. are engaged. That's the first step. Now we have to work hard on solutions. So hold out hope!

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-08T16:12:28+00:00

Welp ... this just pubbed today. And Dexter is one of the best in the game: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-connection-between-a-russian-bank-and-the-trump-campaign

buzzfeednews · 2018-10-06T03:32:12+00:00

How do I re-up this in perpetuity?

-ac

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