Deepfake News: Donald Trump Says AI Is ‘So Scary‘

AI is “maybe the most dangerous thing out there,” former U.S. President Donald Trump said, weighing in on the globally disruptive tech as part of a forthcoming broadcast interview.

In a preview clip from an interview conducted by Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, Trump sounded off on various topics, including CBDCs and artificial intelligence.

“The AI, as they call it, it is so scary,” Trump said on Sunday’s episode of Sunday Morning Futures. “I think [its] maybe the most dangerous thing out there of anything because there’s no real solution.”

Since its public debut last year, artificial intelligence—especially generative AI—has taken the world by storm. An unfortunate side effect of the proliferation of AI tools has been a surge in AI-generated deepfakes, including those of the 2024 Republican presidential hopeful and his rival and current President of the United States, Joe Biden.

“I saw somebody ripping me off the other day where they had me making a speech about their product,” Trump said. “I said, ‘I’ll never endorse that, and I’m telling you, you can’t even tell the difference.’”

AI-generated deepfakes of high-profile people, including Trump, Biden, Pope Francis, Tom Hanks, and most recently, Taylor Swift, have flooded the internet.

In the interview, Trump called for action regarding AI and AI-generated deepfakes, raising the concern that the technology could be used to start wars.

“Something has to be done about this, and it has to be done fast,” Trump said. “And nobody really knows what to do.”

A similar concern was voiced by the United Nations and UN Secretary-General last summer.

“All stakeholders should take urgent and immediate measures to ensure the safe, secure, responsible, ethical and human rights compliant use of artificial intelligence and address the implications of recent advances in this field for the spread of mis- and disinformation and hate speech,” a UN report said.

Trump called AI a problem that needs to be worked on “right now.”

“What you say at an interview with you almost doesn’t matter anymore,” Trump said. “They can change things around, and nobody can tell the difference; even experts can’t tell the difference. This is a tremendous problem in terms of security.”

Even U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler has sounded the alarm on deepfakes and the risk they post to global markets.

“I think we have good laws, but these new technologies will challenge these laws,” Gensler said. “If you’re using AI and you’re doing deepfakes in the market, that’s a real risk to the markets,” he said, adding that “fraud is fraud.”

Last month, OpenAI released a statement documenting how it plans to help fight misinformation using ChatGPT, heading into the 2024 election season.

“As we prepare for elections in 2024 across the world’s largest democracies, our approach is to continue our platform safety work by elevating accurate voting information, enforcing measured policies, and improving transparency,” OpenAI said in a blog post.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.