This was inevitable: defamatory race hoaxer meets voice AI
I’m surprised this took as long as it did – which was not very long, actually. The black perp, who had been athletic director at the school, combined race hoaxing with workplace revenge in order to frame his white principal:
A high school athletic director in Maryland has been accused of using artificial intelligence to impersonate a principal on an audio recording that included racist and antisemitic comments, authorities said Thursday.
Authorities said the case appears to be among the first of its kind in the country and called for new laws to guard against the technology. Experts also warned that artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly powerful, while the ability to detect it may lag behind without more resources.
Dazhon Darien faked the voice of Pikesville High School’s principal in response to conversations the men had about Darien’s poor work performance and whether his contract would be renewed, Baltimore County police said. …
The audio clip quickly spread on social media and had “profound repercussions,” the court documents stated, with the principal being placed on leave. The recording put the principal and his family at “significant risk,” while police officers provided security at his house, according to authorities.
The recording also triggered a wave of hate-filled messages on social media and an inundation of phone calls to the school, police said. Activities were disrupted for a time, and some staff felt unsafe.
Darien apparently used Large Language Models to create his fake, and fortunately the police got some experts to analyze it. Darien was about to be arrested, but was boarding a flight to Houston and was stopped because of “how he had packaged his firearm for the flight.”
The article I linked, which is from Fox but was originally from AP, never mentions that Darien is black and the principal white. I only know that fact because earlier I had read another article that mentioned it, but I can’t locate that one at the moment. Interesting omission by AP.
Just to check on the rest of the MSM, I read this CBS coverage of the story. No mention of the race of either man. I also watched a video there, which did have a photo of the principal. But nothing of the sort about the perp, and no mention of his race. These omissions are highly highly unlikely to be accidental.
Barry Meislin had a good one up earlier in the “sam” thread 😉 Baltimore HS athletic director used AI to make fake clip of principal spouting racist rhetoric
Yes, he is a negro and a giant blob of fat.
How in the world does someone as unhealthy as the perp get a job as an athletic director?
We all know how.
Why do parents force their kids to go into this sort of toxic environment?
Karmi:
The NY Post is on the right, so of course they add the inconvenient truth.
In what world is the NY Post on the right? Being less left wing that the NY Times isn’t being on the right.
Alan Colbo:
How often do you read the NY Post? I read it quite often. It is on the right – probably more so than Fox. It’s a tabloid, but when it does the news it is consistently on the right. There may be a few exceptions, but I’m not aware of them. I’ve quoted the paper many times on this blog.
The NY Post was especially courageous in covering the Hunter Biden story when almost no other big paper would do so, when the story first broke prior to the 2020 election.
Yup, the MSM does not like to acknowledge a black’s false charges of racism.
Compare this with Jussie Smollett. Jussie Smollet’s false racism charge was easy to spot, as from the beginning the charge sounded bogus from the time, temperature, and place the event was supposed to have occurred. A MAGA-inspired assault in Chicago, which Biden won in 2020 by a 74-24 margin? A MAGA-inspired assault at 2 in the morning, when it is 10-15 degrees Farenheit? Come on, man! It just took some persistent police questioning to crack it.
But this fabrication involved a much higher degree of forensic skill to catch.
There is a need for heavy penalties- or any penalties- for race hoaxing, so that those contemplating race hoaxing will realize there will be “yuuge” penalties if they are caught. The old method of letting them go has not worked.
The more that race hoaxes are used, the more that whites will roll their eyes when there is a racism charge. If you cry “wolf” too often, eventually people will stop listening. Fake racism charges are not old. I experienced one in the ’60s.
I called attention to this before, and I think, in an election year, it needs to be widespread knowledge.
Video is certainly edging into this zone, as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXpdyAWLDas
Assume there may be an “October surprise” of faked media that will be hyped as “recently uncovered, true footage” of some inexcusable act by Trump.
It will likely only be 10-15 seconds, but you can bet it will apparently be as damning as humanly possible.
If you accept the concept of hate crimes then these hoaxes are hate crimes against whites.
The alleged perp’s first name gives his ethnicity away.
Another interesting note about this case is the forwarding of the deep fake to another teacher who then sent it to a student knowning they would shotgun social media with it. Students are both the shield and weapon for ideologues posing as teachers.