Eric Adams used an AI to translate his voice into languages he doesn’t speak. An initiative deemed “unethical” for technology specialists.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams used artificial intelligence to translate your voice in several languages, a majority of which he does not speak. As part of a recruitment campaign in his city, automated telephone calls with his voice were made in different languages, such as Mandarin or Yiddish, reports the daily The Los Angeles Times.
The daily specifies that the New York mayor only speaks one language: English. “People stop me in the street and say to me ‘I didn’t know you spoke Mandarin’! The automatic calls we use mobilize different languages to speak directly with the diversity of New York”, explained Eric Adams to from the Los Angeles Times.
The calls do not reveal that the mayor does not speak the languages concerned, or that the calls were made via artificial intelligence, which is denounced by an American group dedicated to monitoring the use of technologies, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.
“The mayor is making deepfakes of himself,” regrets Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the group, from the Los Angeles Times.
“It’s deeply unethical, especially when it’s funded by public money. Using artificial intelligence to convince New Yorkers that it speaks different languages is Orwellian. Yes, we need publicity in all the languages of the inhabitants, but these deepfakes are just a vanity and worrying project,” protests the executive director.
This appeal campaign comes in a complicated context for regulators, who see deepfake technology improving day by day and digital platforms being outdated.
2023-10-18 16:19:22
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