A GERMAN magazines world exclusive interview with paralysed F1 legend Michael Schumacher. Fake.

A stunning photograph given first place and handed a prestigious Sony World Photography Award. Never taken.

And a banger of a new song called Heart On My Sleeve featuring Drake and The Weeknd dropped on streaming services. Never recorded.

Welcome to another crazy 24 hours in the world of artificial intelligence, where truth and disinformation collide.

Die Aktuelle, a weekly German gossip magazine, splashed a Schumacher interview across its cover when the content of it was actually created by an AI chatbot designed to respond like Schumacher might.

Berlin artist Boris Eldagsen revealed his photo submitted to a high-profile photography competition was dreamt up by artificial intelligence.

This came just after a new song purportedly by Drake was pulled from streaming services by Universal Music Group for infringing content created with generative AI.

These controversies followed on from provocative AI-generated images of Frances President Emmanuel Macron being arrested and of an incandescent Donald Trump being manhandled by American police.

All beamed around the world to a believing audience.

Thats not to mention a super-realistic shot of the Pope resplendent in a massive white puffer coat.

This one even fooled broadcaster and seasoned journalist Andrew Marr, as I found out in a recent conversation with him.

Such images are created by AI technology with the simple push of a button, with entire scenes generated from nothing.

The growing threat posed by generative artificial intelligence technologies is upon us.

Not long ago, it would have been simple to distinguish between real and fake images but it is now almost impossible to spot the difference.

The simplicity of producing these photographs, interviews, songs and soon videos means that platforms that dont put measures against them will be flooded.

These technologies and deepfakes are clear and present threats to democracy and are being seized upon by propagandist regimes to supercharge their agenda and drown out truth.

You could fake an entire political movement, for example.

This is a new war we need to fight, a war on artificial truth and the inequality of truth around the world.

It is time to restore trust. Soon, we will lose the ability to have reasonable online discourse if we cant have a shared sense of reality.

These forgeries are so sophisticated that millions of people globally could be simultaneously watching and believing a speech that Joe Biden never gave.

Nation states will have to reimagine how they govern in a world where their communication to the public will be, by default, disbelieved.

One of the biggest issues we have in social media is that content is user-uploaded and it is nearly impossible to track its origin.

Was the upload taken by an iPhone? Was it heavily Photoshopped? Was it a complete fabrication generated by AI? We dont know its veracity.

Information warfare is now a front, right alongside conventional warfare.

During the Ukraine conflict, we have been faced with a barrage of manipulated media.

There have been deepfake videos of President Zelensky where he says he is resigning and surrendering. It doesnt get more serious than that.

These are dangerous weapons which can have devastating consequences.

And unlike T-80 tanks, the weapons of this front are in everyones hands.

To counter all of this, a number of us computer scientists are creating technologies that help build trust.

Ours is FrankliApp.com, a content platform where we can definitively say that every piece of photography and video is not edited, faked or touched up in any way.

We need more of this and the right regulation to ensure it happens.

As investor Ian Hogarth told Radio 4 yesterday: Theres currently more regulation on selling a Pret sandwich than there is in building super-intelligence.

AI companies should be forced to open source their models and allow anyone to check if a piece of content was created by their service.

We also need regulations that make platforms disclose a particular photo or videos digital provenance.

There is some precedent for this as France orders disclosure of fashion photo edits. We need this in all sectors.

The conjured images of Trump, Macron and many others have now been seen and believed by millions worldwide on platforms that dont care whether what they are promoting is real or not.

Thats just plain wrong.

The world needs a solution to this tsunami of distortion.

We must shine a light on the truth, and nothing but the truth, delivering authenticity in this age of disinformation.

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This is a war and artificial intelligence is more dangerous than a T-80 tank. Unlike a tank its in e... - The US Sun