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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said America’s adversaries are toying with new artificial intelligence tools to generate content resembling her that can dupe unwitting audiences, as part of an effort to meddle in global politics.
Mrs. Clinton, who previously heaped blame on the Russian government for her 2016 presidential race loss to Republican Donald Trump, said Thursday that Russia’s previous actions to demonize her were “primitive” and a new leap forward has been made with cutting-edge technology.
The Russians in 2016, she said, “had all kinds of videos of people looking like me but weren’t me, and they had to keep whoever that woman was with her back to the camera enough so that they couldn’t actually be found out,” Mrs. Clinton said at an Aspen Institute event. “Now they can just go ahead, they can take me, and, in fact, they’re experimenting. I’ve had people who are students and experts in this tell me.”
AI-generated AI clones of Mrs. Clinton are now made possible by the massive library of content available on her, according to Mrs. Clinton.
She said such AI-generated content is worrisome because it is believable, defamatory and typically aimed at women.
“It could only be a small handful of people in St. Petersburg or Moldova or wherever they are right now, who are lighting the fire. But because of the algorithms, everybody gets burned,” Mrs. Clinton told the Aspen Institute session hosted by Columbia University.
Mrs. Clinton said that 2024 “is obviously the Ground Zero year” for elections since the advent of new artificial intelligence tools and called for new restrictions on digital speech.
The former first lady and secretary of state said she favored eliminating the hotly contested Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act so that tech companies could be held liable for the content posted by users of their platforms.
“We also need to pass some laws that understand that this is the new assault on free speech,” Mrs. Clinton said. “In our country, people yell free speech, they have no idea what they’re talking about half the time and they yell it to stop an argument, to stop a debate, to prevent legislation from passing.”
While Mrs. Clinton has blamed Russia for her troubles, she said other countries are set to meddle in the upcoming elections, too.
“There’s legitimate concern about hostile foreign state actors, not just Russia, there are others who are getting into the game,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Why not? It looked like it worked, so join the crowd. But we’re now worried that they will use artificial intelligence to interfere in our elections this year.”
Concerns about foreign nations interfering in the upcoming elections are not limited to America’s adversaries either. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner said earlier this month that he had evidence he could not share that some quasi-allies have explored interfering in U.S. politics.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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