Deep Fakery

One way or another, Russians faked out the Fed

Bloomberg reported today that Fed Chair Jerome Powell was tricked by Russians to believe he was interviewing with Ukrainian President Zelensky in a video that aired on Russian State television where hosts laughed at the trickery. The Fed admitted the interview happened, but also said the video appeared edited and that they were uncertain about any of the content. I’ve posted the gimmicky looking video for you to review whether there might be a little additional AI deep-fakery or other photo-editing as the video clearly contains edits that a virtual interview would not normally have and shows a bad green-screen kind of shadow around Powell’s head.

While there is nothing noteworthy in anything Powell said, Russian media for some reason found abundant pleasure in playing it. I put it in the news today not just because the story was popping up everywhere but because I have noticed something that really stood out this week on my own website. While I commonly get a few more attempted hacks by Russia and Ukraine than most places — like about eight per day — I am now getting well over 400 hostile attempted hacks per day that originate from the Russian Federation with only 1-2 attempts from any of the other nations listed, including Ukraine. So, when the US says Russia has spent over $300-million trying to rig foreign elections (a figure possibly beat by the US), I have no doubt they have. Both sides should stop pretending to care about democracy and just let democracy and free speech be.

There is also more today in AI news about Elon Musk’s competition with OpenGPT in the AI arena and his deep-rooted history in initial AI development.

On the economic front, significant news emerged that US GDP growth is fading rapidly, now hovering on the edge of recession, and continuing jobless claims have risen to the level that they normally hit exactly as the US enters recession. The second dip of the Fed’s recession is beginning.