TikTok's light hand over content

Hiya, it’s Alex in Los Angeles. There’s already dark evidence social media companies will struggle to police deepfakes this election season. [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( [by Alex Barinka]( Hiya, it’s Alex in Los Angeles. There’s already dark evidence social media companies will struggle to police deepfakes this election season. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Microsoft briefly hit a [$3 trillion market value]( • Amazon’s Ring won’t accept [police’s video requests]( • IBM forecasts positive [free cash flow in 2024]( Pay attention to the dead I was scrolling TikTok this week when a video was served up that gave me pause. A toddler was speaking in Spanish, detailing how her caretaker “unloaded his frustration on me, hitting me and crashing my head into the car seat mercilessly.” She said her name was Alissa Beth Guernsey, but it couldn’t actually be Guernsey. [She died]( from her injuries in 2009, and this video had the characteristic uncanny feel of AI. Posts like this are called digital resurrections, bringing people back from the dead with the help of new artificial intelligence tools. Especially when there are dead children involved, these videos are shocking and against TikTok’s policies, which ban AI-created portrayals of private citizens and minors, as well as “gruesome” or “disturbing” content on the popular video app. Unfortunately, they’re also quite familiar to me. Last month, [I wrote about]( the AI-generated digital resurrections that are going viral on ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok – deepfaked portrayals of people who died in tragic situations like the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel. The videos sent by Bloomberg to TikTok for comment were removed immediately. A spokesperson said this week the company will continue to update policies and detection efforts of this type of content, while partnering with experts to try to educate users about AI-generated posts. After a few minutes of scrolling this past week, I found dozens and dozens of these videos still live, as well as full accounts with tens of thousands of followers posting more. Some posts even have a tag placed on them by the creator that identifies it as AI, giving TikTok and its moderation team a clear signal it could be a deepfake, yet these videos are still up. It’s worth pointing out that TikTok’s policies on deepfakes of public people have “more latitude,” according to its community guidelines, only imposing restrictions on endorsements, misleading statements about political or financial issues, or if the person is the subject of abuse. We’ll get to see how the company defines those prohibited uses through their moderation actions. This feels all the more significant as we round the corner on election season, when misinformation and influence campaigns tend to run rampant. Just this week, deepfaked audio of US President Joe Biden was used in a robocall campaign. Disinformation experts called it the [most alarming]( doctored message they’ve seen yet – and there’s still more than nine months to go until the US presidential election. So far, social media execs, like Meta Platforms Inc.’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, have been quick to call on policymakers for help in the form of regulation that forces AI “[watermarking](,” which would append an invisible but reviewable tag identifying content as generated by artificial intelligence. “That does not exist at the moment,” Clegg said in Davos last week. “In my view, that’s the most urgent task facing us today.” At the same time, big tech companies have been touting the massive investments and innovative thinking they’re pouring into being the first in the AI arms race. They tend to talk more about who will be the first to create artificial generalized intelligence or how AI will eventually make them money, rather than using it for better moderation or detection technology. We often describe social media companies’ content policing as “whack-a-mole,” focusing on the posts and videos that elicit outrage or news attention. I’m wondering if that may be a bit too generous in the age of AI. It feels less like they’re standing eagle-eyed over their platforms, moderation hammers at the ready, and more like their attention is fixed elsewhere (perhaps building their own AI products) until a shouting media and public finally prompts them to take a swing. —[Alex Barinka](mailto:abarinka2@bloomberg.net) The big story Aleph Alpha CEO Jonas Andrulis said major technology companies investing in AI could come to dominate the new technology. He said [a fair environment is needed,]( one in which policymakers support smaller companies to create a level playing field. One to watch [Watch the Bloomberg Technology analysis]( of Tesla earnings. Get fully charged Alphabet’s shares surged as optimism surrounding its [AI capabilities boosts the stock](. Microsoft had been tracking a group of Russian hackers and then found that the hackers [were surveilling Microsoft as well](. The CEO of ASML, which makes essential chipmaking equipment, said 90% of the company’s business in China is [unaffected by US or Dutch export controls](. 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