rt – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Editor-In-Chief Of RT, Russia’s Main Propaganda Network, Says Many Of Its Presenters Are AI-Generated – If You Can Believe Her

from the what-is-truth dept

RT, formerly Russia Today, has appeared a few times here on Techdirt. As the long article about RT on Wikipedia explains, the TV channel has morphed from an attempt to create a state-supported international news network along the lines of the BBC or France 24, but one that offered a Russian perspective on the world, to something that is now regarded as little more than a mouthpiece for Kremlin propaganda (disclosure: I was interviewed by Russia Today a couple of times over a decade ago.).

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, RT is now banned in many Western nations, but still commands audiences in other countries and online. As a result, considerable resources are still expended on RT and on the programs it produces. It is also continuing to explore new ways to reach people, and perhaps to save money, judging by a story on the independent Russian media site Agentstvo. It reports on statements made by RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan (original in Russian, translation by DeepL):

A ‘significant proportion’ of RT’s TV presenters do not exist, they have been created by artificial intelligence, Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the state channel, told TVC [TV Centre, a channel owned by the city administration of Moscow]. According to the propagandist, the artificial presenters also run their own social networks.

‘We have a significant proportion of TV presenters who do not exist. They don’t exist, they are artificial completely. This person doesn’t exist, and never did. This face never existed, we generated the voice, everything else, the character,’ the RT chief said.

One of the non-existent presenters had invited people to subscribe to her Telegram channel, promising the first readers [of the Telegram channel] amnesty ‘when we come to power,’ Simonyan retold the joke of her ‘colleague.’

Of course, with the head of a propaganda channel, there is always the risk that such statements are just more propaganda designed to mislead. But using AI-generated presenters makes a lot of sense here. They will never go off script, as humans might; the script that they read can be tweaked endlessly without the presenter getting tired or bored; and the spoken words can even be translated into the other languages in which RT broadcasts, read out by the same presenter with different mouth movements, or by a completely different one. A later comment from Simonyan seems to confirm this is happening:

RT has given up on broadcast editors; now images are selected or created by AI, Simonyan noted. This makes the process much cheaper, she explained. AI is involved in the dubbing of a new film about the Great Patriotic War [Russia’s name for the Eastern Front in World War II], using it to re-translate Vladimir Putin’s words into other languages, Simonyan said.

Journalism, as the ‘dark one’ of professions, will eventually disappear, like the coachmen did, the propagandist believes.

Moving towards a completely virtual, AI-generated network, complete with AI presenters and editors, would raise huge questions if the plan were to present conventional news reporting or features, with the underlying aim of presenting facts and the truth (whatever that means). But as a network that is designed to broadcast Russian propaganda, those questions are irrelevant. All that matters for Simonyan and her ultimate boss, Vladimir Putin, is whether the propaganda works, and if it can be generated in larger volumes, and more cheaply. Unfortunately, as is evident from everyday experience online, AI-generated fakes and lies do indeed work remarkably well. What is less clear is if other broadcasters, especially state-funded ones, will be able to resist the pressure to start using more AI, at least for backroom editorial functions, but maybe even for presenters, in order to compete in this brave new (artificial) world.

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Filed Under: ai, editors, kremlin, margarita simonyan, propaganda, russia, ukraine, virtual presenters, vladimir putin, world war ii
Companies: rt

from the nyet,-comrade dept

Last year, we wrote about the really bizarre case of a website called “Business Casual” that filed a couple of copyright infringement lawsuits. One was against TV-Novosti, the Russian state-owned news organization that runs RT (formerly Russia Today). While there was a brief period of time in which RT pretended that it wanted to be a respected global news brand a la the BBC, it didn’t take long before it became a propaganda arm for Vladimir Putin.

Business Casual claimed that RT’s Arabic channel had pulled some clips from some of Business Casual’s videos that were potentially infringing. The case had a bunch of twists, including that many of the images were based on public domain images, but which Business Casual had modified using what it refers to as its “parallax” technology to take static images and give them a 3D feel. Whether or not there was a fair use argument (or a lack of copyright on the images argument) to be made didn’t much matter, because after initially responding to the lawsuit, TV-Novosti eventually just decided to ignore the case, leading to a default judgment.

After the default judgment there was another bit of a twist in the case, in which a Moscow-based executive from TV-Novosti sent a letter to the court asking the court to appoint an attorney to represent TV-Novosti, noting that because of various EU and US sanctions against Russia due to the Ukraine invasion, no banks will work with TV-Novosti, and thus it cannot figure out how to pay a US lawyer to represent it in court. The company says it needs a lawyer because it knows that corporations cannot appear pro se, and thus asks the court to appoint one for it.

The court’s response was that TV-Novosti is correct that it cannot represent itself in court, and notes that the letter requesting an appointed counsel was… the company representing itself in court, and therefore even that request for counsel got stricken from the docket, since there was no authority to file it. The court did suggest that TV-Novosti could reach out to the NY Legal Assistance Group to see if it would provide counsel, but no lawyer ever showed up, and thus the default judgment stood and the case was closed.

No matter how strong the argument may have been in that case, the second case that Business Casual filed was just dumb. It also sued YouTube, basically arguing that in allowing RT Arabic to infringe on Business Casual’s copyright (already potentially questionable), YouTube was itself infringing on Business Casual’s copyright.

And, again, things got weird in the case. Business Casual’s lawyer kept filing for extensions, claiming that the owner/operator of Business Casual, Alex Edson, was dealing with “severe” health problems and was “in agonizing pain and cannot function.” Yet, just as Business Casual’s lawyer was saying that to the court, Edson was in the process of releasing a nearly two hour long overly dramatic video (complete with a Putin impersonator explaining copyright law badly) about how YouTube’s lawyers were liars and the failure to take down the RT-Arabic account was because YouTube was an anti-American company.

Anyway, the court tossed out the lawsuit against YouTube, noting that nothing YouTube did violated copyright law.

Business Casual appealed, and now the 2nd Circuit Appeals Court has upheld the lower court ruling with a summary order (basically “this is such a waste of our time, we’re not even going to write a real opinion”) that is just a few pages saying “everything about this case is stupid, the lower court got it right, why are you bothering us?”

It affirms the lack of contributory or vicarious copyright infringement by YouTube, which is standard fare. Indeed, the order notes that Business Casual’s own filings seem to admit the basic facts that show that YouTube was neither contributorily or vicariously liable:

Rather, the amended complaint states that TV-Novosti took active steps to conceal its infringement by removing Business Casual’s watermark from the images in question, replacing it with its own watermark, and removing the color from Business Casual’s videos. According to the amended complaint, these steps by TV-Novosti allowed it to “evade detection from YouTube’s copyright-detection technology.” App’x at 299. Moreover, the amended complaint established that YouTube promptly removed the three videos at issue from its platform once it became aware of the alleged infringement, and these videos remain unavailable.

Business Casual’s own allegations reveal that YouTube did not materially contribute to, but rather acted to remedy, TV-Novosti’s infringement. Apparently recognizing that these allegations undermine a plausible claim, Business Casual concedes in its brief that its claims “do not arise from a failure by YouTube to detect, prevent, or acknowledge the infringement” by TVNovosti and are, thus, “[u]nlike typical cases involving secondary infringement.”

So having admitted in its own pleadings that YouTube couldn’t actually be liable for copyright infringement, the entire case hinged on the idea that YouTube was liable for not banning the RT-Arabic YouTube account under its repeat infringer policies.

But, this is… not how the DMCA works. As the district court initially explained (and which Business Casual’s lawyer seemed not to understand), the DMCA’s requirement for a repeat infringer policy is just part of the requirements for being eligible for the DMCA’s safe harbors, and does not create its own cause of action. But, Business Casual appealed that decision, and the 2nd Circuit points out that, no, the lower court was exactly correct:

Business Casual devotes much of its brief to arguing that YouTube’s failure to terminate TV-Novosti’s channels after it received three notices of infringing conduct is inconsistent with YouTube’s Repeat Infringer Policy. Business Casual argues that YouTube’s inconsistent practices should “result in the withdrawal of safe harbor protection” under the DMCA. Appellant’s Br. at 18. However, we agree with the district court that Business Casual’s attempt to assert an independent claim against YouTube based on its alleged failure to consistently apply its Repeat Infringer Policy is entirely misplaced.

The DMCA safe harbor provision that Business Casual relies on is an affirmative defense that a defendant may assert when a plaintiff sufficiently alleges a viable claim of prima facie copyright infringement. See 17 U.S.C. § 512(l) (“The failure of a service provider’s conduct to qualify for limitation of liability under this section shall not bear adversely upon the consideration of a defense by the service provider that the service provider’s conduct is not infringing under this title or any other defense.”); see also Capitol Recs., LLC v. Vimeo, LLC, 826 F.3d 78, 94 (2d Cir. 2016) (“[T]he safe harbor is properly seen as an affirmative defense, and therefore must be raised by the defendant.”); CoStar Grp., Inc. v. LoopNet, Inc., 373 F.3d 544, 555 (4th Cir. 2004) (“[T]he DMCA is irrelevant to determining what constitutes a prima facie case of copyright infringement.”). In other words, there is no affirmative cause of action for any alleged failure by YouTube to apply its Repeat Infringer Policy in accordance with the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions. As discussed above, Business Casual has not sufficiently alleged a plausible claim for contributory or vicarious copyright infringement. Thus, the district court properly determined that it need not reach the applicability of the “safe harbor” affirmative defense under the DMCA.

And thus, YouTube’s win over Business Casual is affirmed. I await the two hour YouTube video from Business Casual (perhaps they can bring back the Putin impersonator) mis-explaining the DMCA, and claiming that the panel of judges on the 2nd Circuit are anti-American.

Filed Under: alex edson, copyright, dmca, repeat infringer policy, ron coleman
Companies: business casual, google, rt, russia today, tv-novosti, youtube

Russia Threatens To Go To War With Google Over Stupid Comments By Eric Schmidt

from the what-a-mess dept

What a world we live in, where a giant country and a giant company may be about to go to war. At a security conference, Alphabet “executive chairman” Eric Schmidt made some fairly dumb comments saying that the company was looking at downranking sites like RT and Sputnik:

?We?re working on detecting this kind of scenario … and de-ranking those kinds of sites,? Schmidt said, in response to a question at an event in Halifax, Canada. ?It?s basically RT and Sputnik. We?re well aware and we?re trying to engineer the systems to prevent it.?

To be clear: I have no doubt that RT and Sputnik have engaged in attempts to push anti-US propaganda in the US. That seems fairly obvious at this point. My concern is twofold: first of all, saying that “it’s basically RT and Sputnik” suggests Schmidt thinks that the issue is just those two sites and merely downranking them will solve problems related to propaganda. That’s both wrong and naive. Second, having the executive chair of Google’s parent company directly announce that Google is working on ways to downrank two specific sites is bad. Part of Google’s longstanding position has always been that they don’t interfere to go after specific sites, in part because that creates a massive slippery slope. Of course, Google gave up on part of that position five years ago when it caved in to Hollywood and agreed to start downranking sites based on accusations (not actual convictions) of copyright infringement.

Directly coming out and saying that Google is targeting these two sites — no matter how bad those sites are — only reinforces the idea that Google will ideologically rank sites, rather than focus on what was its core mission of helping people find the information they were looking for.

And, of course, there are the wider implications of this — whereby you now have the head of Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor, threatening to retaliate should Google actually downrank those sites:

Alexander Zharov, head of media regulator Roskomnadzor, said his agency sent a letter to Google on Tuesday requesting clarification on comments Saturday by Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt about how the Russian websites would be treated in search, according to Interfax.

?We will receive an answer and understand what to do next,? Interfax quoted Zharov as saying. ?We hope our opinion will be heard, and we won?t have to resort to more serious? retaliatory measures.

Now that’s quite an interesting SEO strategy, to have a nuclear power threaten retaliation for dropping in the rankings. Never mind that this is the same Roskomnadzor currently involved in a corruption scandal, and which has been pushing forward on widespread internet censorship without due process.

The whole thing seems like quite a mess — one that easily could have been avoided if Schmidt hadn’t specifically called out those two sites, which, at best, are only a small corner of a larger issue. It would have been fine to suggest that Google was looking to algorithmically do a better job of minimizing false reports or outright propaganda (though, even that might raise serious questions). But to single out two specific sites backed by the Russian government just seems dumb. On the flip side, having Roskomnadzor hit back so strongly also seems fairly short-sighted, as it appears to be the Russian government more or less admitting that it relied on US companies to spread propaganda, and it won’t tolerate efforts to diminish the power of its propaganda.

Of course, it does seem worth noting that three years ago, Google shut down its Russian office just as Russia picked up its efforts to censor the internet in that country. So it’s not as if Google and the Russian government haven’t been at odds before — but this certainly feels like an escalation.

Filed Under: downranking, eric schmidt, fake news, propagranda, roskomnadzor, rozkomnadzor, russia
Companies: alphabet, google, rt, sputnik