By Anuj Chopra, Anna Malpas and Rachel Blundy, AFP<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nAn AI Tik Tok video of Queen Elizabeth.
\nPhoto: TikTok \/ Supplied\n<\/p>\n
In a parallel reality, Queen Elizabeth II gushes over cheese puffs, a gun-toting Saddam Hussein struts into a wrestling ring, and Pope John Paul II attempts skateboarding.<\/p>\n
Hyper-realistic AI videos of dead celebrities – created with apps such as OpenAI’s easy-to-use Sora – have rapidly spread online, prompting debate over the control of deceased people’s likenesses.<\/p>\n
OpenAI’s app, launched in September and widely dubbed as a deepfake machine, has unleashed a flood of videos of historical figures including Winston Churchill as well as celebrities such as Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley.<\/p>\n
In one TikTok clip reviewed by AFP, Queen Elizabeth II, clad in pearls and a crown, arrives at a wrestling match on a scooter, climbs a fence, and leaps onto a male wrestler.<\/p>\n
In a separate Facebook clip, the late queen is shown praising “delightfully orange” cheese puffs in a supermarket aisle, while another depicts her playing football.<\/p>\n
But not all videos – powered by OpenAI’s Sora 2 model – have prompted laughs.<\/p>\n
In October, OpenAI blocked users from creating videos of Martin Luther King Jr. after the estate of the civil rights icon complained about disrespectful depictions.<\/p>\n
Some users created videos depicting King making monkey noises during his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech, illustrating how users can portray public figures at will, making them say or do things they never did.<\/p>\n
‘Maddening’<\/p>\n
“We’re getting into the ‘uncanny valley,'” said Constance de Saint Laurent, a professor at Ireland’s Maynooth University, referring to the phenomenon in which interactions with artificial objects are so human-like it triggers unease.<\/p>\n
“If suddenly you started receiving videos of a deceased family member, this is traumatizing,” she told AFP. “These (videos) have real consequences.”<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, the children of late actor Robin Williams, comedian George Carlin, and activist Malcolm X have condemned the use of Sora to create synthetic videos of their fathers.<\/p>\n
Zelda Williams, the daughter of Robin Williams, recently pleaded on Instagram to “stop sending me AI videos of dad,” calling the content “maddening.”<\/p>\n
An OpenAI spokesman told AFP that while there were “strong free speech interests in depicting historical figures,” public figures and their families should have ultimate control over their likeness.<\/p>\n
For “recently deceased” figures, he added, authorized representatives or estate owners can now request that their likeness not be used in Sora.<\/p>\n
‘Control likeness’<\/p>\n
“Despite what OpenAI says about wanting people to control their likeness, they have released a tool that decidedly does the opposite,” Hany Farid, co-founder of GetReal Security and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told AFP.<\/p>\n
“While they (mostly) stopped the creation of MLK Jr. videos, they are not stopping users from co-opting the identity of many other celebrities.”<\/p>\n
“Even with OpenAI putting some safeguards to protect MLK Jr. there will be another AI model that does not, and so this problem will surely only get worse,” said Farid.<\/p>\n
That reality was underscored in the aftermath of Hollywood director Rob Reiner’s alleged murder this month, as AFP fact-checkers uncovered AI-generated clips using his likeness spreading online.<\/p>\n
As advanced AI tools proliferate, the vulnerability is no longer confined to public figures: deceased non-celebrities may also have their names, likenesses, and words repurposed for synthetic manipulation.<\/p>\n
Researchers warn that the unchecked spread of synthetic content – widely called AI slop – could ultimately drive users away from social media.<\/p>\n
“The issue with misinformation in general is not so much that people believe it. A lot of people don’t,” said Saint Laurent.<\/p>\n
“The issue is that they see real news and they don’t trust it anymore. And this (Sora) is going to massively increase that.”<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Anuj Chopra, Anna Malpas and Rachel Blundy, AFP An AI Tik Tok video of Queen Elizabeth. Photo:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-196272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}