a social media activist and co-founder of Sleeping Giants (a group that campaigns to stop companies from running online ads that spread messages of discrimination and hate), said in an interview with CNN Business that she often receives harassment on social media from unknown and impersonal accounts. However, she recounted one specific incident that occurred in July 2019 that was different from the others. Specifically, she was sent a threatening message on Twitter from an account that had a profile picture of a woman with blonde hair and a bright smile. Her profile had minimal information, such as a name, “Jessica,” and a short description about her that said: “If you are a murderer I will fight you.” Nandini Jammi claims that the account in question sent her the following message on Twitter: "Why didn't you delete your information from Adult Friend Finder? It's been three years."
And it didn’t stop there. “Jessica” claimed to have obtained embarrassing sensitive information about Jammi from an old profile on an online dating site. Jammi told CNN Business that she was never particularly active on the online dating site in question. “Jessica” also made a reference to an old dating profile, EJ Gibney, an independent researcher who has participated in Sleeping Giants campaigns. In addition, “Jessica” said that the woman smiling in her account’s profile picture may not have existed. CNN Business experts revealed, after research, that this image was created with the help of new sophisticated artificial intelligence. They went on to clarify that many fake and anonymous accounts, in order to look like real accounts, often use, as profile pictures, images that have been stolen from other, real users’ accounts.
For example, “Jenna Abrams,” an account with the face of an American conservative woman, amassed more than 70,000 followers by 2017 before being deleted from Twitter. The account was actually operated by a Russian government-affiliated troll, and the image it used turned out to belong to a 26-year-old Russian woman who was unaware that her image was being used in this way until she contacted CNN in 2017.
It should be noted that most social media have rules against using images of other people in this way, and users can file complaints for impersonation when their identity is used. However, when user profiles are used by non-existent individuals, often there is no reference to impersonation.
“Jessica” was part of a coordinated network of about 50 accounts that were managed by the same individual or individuals. The accounts were used to harass activists.
Moreover, synthetic mass media are already on the radar of the American government. In 2019, the American Intelligence Service warned the Global Threat Assessment that opponents and strategic competitors might try to use cutting‑edge technologies or similar learning technologies to create convincing but false image, audio and video files against the United States, its allies and partners.
The summer of 2019, Gibney began documenting a network of accounts, including “Jessica”, that were harassing him and his co-activists. CNN Business asked two top certified medical examiners to review the images used for about twelve accounts that Gibney believes were part of the same campaign. Both experts agreed that the majority of the roughly twelve images they examined, including the image used on the “Jessica” account, showed that they had been fabricated using AI.
Fake images created with the help of AI technology are easy to access online. In 2019, Phil Wang, a former software engineer at Uber, created a website called “This Person Doesn’t Exist.” Every time someone visits the website, they see a new face, which in most cases looks like a real person. However, the faces are created through AI technology. The people, as the name of the website suggests, literally don’t exist. Wang’s goal is to show people what technology can do. After looking at the photo of “Jessica,” Wang couldn’t tell if it was created through his website. However, he was certain that “Jessica” wasn’t real. He also warned that fake faces like “Jessica” could be just a small sign of what’s to come. Social media companies that have AI researchers should allocate some time and research funds to this ever-growing problem.
Finally, Nathaniel Gleicher, a lead on Facebook that deals with coordinated disinformation campaigns, including those linked to the Russian and Iranian governments, said that developers need to think about how various such tools could be used by fraudsters or hackers.
