Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope.
Speaker 1: I'm mos Vloshian and today Karen Price and I will
Speaker 1: bring you the headlines this week, including just how raunchy
Speaker 1: Meta AI is prepared to get. Then on tech Support,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to Bloomberg's Olivia Carville about the Take It
Speaker 1: Down Act and what it means for the future of
Speaker 1: the Internet. All of that on the weekend Tech It's Friday,
Speaker 1: May second. So Karen, I need to tell you about
Speaker 1: something totally ridiculous I read this week because of students
Speaker 1: I read it. I thought of you, What about me?
Speaker 1: About yourself and addiction?
Speaker 2: Oh jeez.
Speaker 1: So a man in Japan is scaling Mount Fuji.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say this sounds like the rain in Spain.
Speaker 1: Falls mainly on the police, and I have a third
Speaker 1: bit to my man in Japan. But he climbs up
Speaker 1: Mount Fuji. He gets stuck up there and he has
Speaker 1: to be rescued.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's normal. Why does he have to be rescued?
Speaker 1: It's a tall mountain, altitude, sickness, you know, whatever else.
Speaker 1: But that's not why I thought about you.
Speaker 2: Okay, Why did you think about me?
Speaker 1: Well, because he went back. Jesus, he went back because
Speaker 1: he'd left his phone up there.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot on his phone to his credit.
Speaker 2: We don't know what he does.
Speaker 1: Guess what happened next?
Speaker 2: Oh no, he got he got stuck again.
Speaker 1: He had to be rescued.
Speaker 2: This is this is the myth of Sissyphus cell phone
Speaker 2: edition exactly.
Speaker 1: That is very very well put.
Speaker 2: If he called me and was like, I forgot my
Speaker 2: phone and I was the police, I'd say, let's get
Speaker 2: up there, buddy, let's go, let's get it.
Speaker 1: But now I think you're going to have an opportunity
Speaker 1: to make fun.
Speaker 2: Of me on air, on air, exciting.
Speaker 1: Because I have a confession to make. I'm feeling a
Speaker 1: little bit breath.
Speaker 2: This week was the Daily Mail down no more than
Speaker 2: seven seconds.
Speaker 1: It's all by paywall these days.
Speaker 2: That's true. That should make you breath. Why are you breath?
Speaker 1: Well, this is about something which defines my adolescence, which
Speaker 1: is Skype. It has been dying a long death with
Speaker 1: one degradation after another, doom, doom.
Speaker 2: And then it says you do not have enough connection.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no credits exactly. On May fifth, Skype will be
Speaker 1: no more.
Speaker 2: I love that it's the same day, that's your Sinko demayo,
Speaker 2: that Skype is disappearing.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, I think I am one of the last
Speaker 1: known survivors on Skype. I use it multiple times every week,
Speaker 1: and it's gotten harder and harder, because I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not joking when I say the product has been degrading,
Speaker 1: and it's literally it's always been unky, but it's become
Speaker 1: almost impossible to use.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've used Skype in ten years.
Speaker 1: I think I'm one of the last known survivors of Skype.
Speaker 1: I've been using it several times a week up until
Speaker 1: it's death rattle. I have a trainer where I work
Speaker 1: out with his base in LA He used to be
Speaker 1: in New York. We worked out together in person. Pandemic happened,
Speaker 1: he moved out West. We started using Skype to work out.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny that you mentioned COVID, because what
Speaker 2: blows my mind is how Skype missed this like massive
Speaker 2: generational opportunity when the pandemic started to be the go
Speaker 2: to video conferencing service and Zoom was like Pio, Sorry, Skype,
Speaker 2: We're out. Truly one of the biggest fumbles that I've seen.
Speaker 1: Well, you're not the only one without observation. The Wolf
Speaker 1: Street Journal published what can only be described as an
Speaker 1: obituary titled so long Skype, thanks for all the drop calls,
Speaker 1: and they mentioned how Zoom and Google Meet took off
Speaker 1: in the pandemic, whereas Skype had a small bounce, partly
Speaker 1: thanks to me, but certainly not enough to stop its
Speaker 1: slow decline.
Speaker 2: By the time twenty twenty had rolled around, newer apps
Speaker 2: with better video quality were available. But you know, Skype
Speaker 2: really ushered in the age of video calling.
Speaker 1: Absolutely true. It launched in two thousand and three and
Speaker 1: it was totally revolutionary.
Speaker 2: It was also just it became like band aid or
Speaker 2: ug like if you were doing any kind of video calling,
Speaker 2: you were.
Speaker 1: Skyping, you're skiping. It was a verb. It was a verb.
Speaker 1: It wasn't now it's been replaced by Zooming. So Microsoft
Speaker 1: bought Skype in twenty eleven for less we forget eight
Speaker 1: point five billion dollars.
Speaker 2: Where does that money go?
Speaker 1: I mean, sally, It was the largest acquisition in Microsoft's
Speaker 1: history at the time. But now Microsoft wants to migrate
Speaker 1: its users to Teams, its new conferencing app Speaking Microsoft
Speaker 1: though In slightly more consequential and much darker news, they
Speaker 1: and other big tech companies are driving AI development on battlefield.
Speaker 1: This is according to a story in The New York
Speaker 1: Times with the headline Israel AI experiments in Gaza war
Speaker 1: raise ethical concerns.
Speaker 2: Hi, every time I hear war an experiment, I'm like,
Speaker 2: please get me away from this story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, but it's sort of the history of warfare, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are always these theoretical, yeah, technological advances
Speaker 1: or things that are developed in the lab, and then
Speaker 1: there's a quote unquote battlefield necessity and the new systems
Speaker 1: get deployed. I mean, you mentioned Agent Orange, but I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about the First World War, poison gas, automatic weapons
Speaker 1: and Ukraine. Of course, the explosion of drone warfare.
Speaker 2: Yees. So what's happening in Israel right now?
Speaker 1: Well, according to the New York Times, Israeli officers used
Speaker 1: AI to pinpoint the exact location of a man called
Speaker 1: Ibrahim Bari, who was a top PAMAS commander. They're having
Speaker 1: a hard time finding him, given they thought he was
Speaker 1: underground in the tunnels, and so Israeli intelligence use this
Speaker 1: AI audio tool that could approximate where Bari was not
Speaker 1: just based on his interceptive phone calls, but based on
Speaker 1: the explosions in the background. They could use AI to
Speaker 1: basically geomat the sound of the explosions which they knew
Speaker 1: were happening elsewhere in Gaza, and from that geolo KATEBII
Speaker 1: and it successfully used that to order an air strike
Speaker 1: that killed Bri but unfortunately it was an area that
Speaker 1: included a refugee camp and one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 1: civilians were also killed.
Speaker 2: So that was in October twenty twenty three. And it's
Speaker 2: just one example of how the Israeli military has used
Speaker 2: AI backed technologies in the war in Gaza. They've used
Speaker 2: AI for facial recognition to help drones lock into targets.
Speaker 2: They've even used an Arabic language AI model and chatbot
Speaker 2: to translate and analyze text messages in social media posts.
Speaker 2: And this is actually according to several American and Israeli
Speaker 2: defense officials, who of course remained anonymous because the work
Speaker 2: is confidential.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as we discussed, technological innovation is often driven by
Speaker 1: the defense industry. It's a big reason Lockheed, Martin and
Speaker 1: Raytheon and Now Andaril are household names but a lot
Speaker 1: of the AI backed military tech using Gaza be coming
Speaker 1: from this innovation hub called the Studio, not the show
Speaker 1: on Apple, not the show on Apple, and not the
Speaker 1: studio we're in now. I mean, the kind of internal
Speaker 1: brand name for this thing is a little chilling. But
Speaker 1: it was set up by a tech forward unit of
Speaker 1: Israeli soldiers called Unit eighty two hundred, So the studio
Speaker 1: actually pairs enlisted soldiers with reservists in the Israeli Army.
Speaker 1: These reservists often work at tech companies like Microsoft, Meta
Speaker 1: and Google, and they work with the kind of full
Speaker 1: time soldiers to develop AI projects and military use.
Speaker 2: And very unsurprisingly, the New York Times did ask for.
Speaker 1: Comment, they did their job there, and Meta and.
Speaker 2: Microsoft declined to comment, and Google just said the work
Speaker 2: those employees do as reservist is not connected to Google.
Speaker 1: According to interviews The New York Times conducted with European
Speaker 1: and American defense officials, no other nation has been as
Speaker 1: active as Israel in experimenting with AI tools in real
Speaker 1: time battles. What I can't stop thinking about, though, is
Speaker 1: that these battle tested technologies are obviously likely to improve
Speaker 1: because of this experimentation. In fact, his radio officers said
Speaker 1: that the AI audio tool they used to find and
Speaker 1: kill Bari has now been refined since that attack and
Speaker 1: can pinpoint targets even more precisely like we've seen in
Speaker 1: wars before. If these new methods of warfare aren't connectually
Speaker 1: regulated by treaties and the like, they will be adopted
Speaker 1: and become the norm.
Speaker 2: I have another very dark story for you. Recently, The
Speaker 2: Wall Street Journal reported on how Meta has allowed its
Speaker 2: digital companions to engage in a range of social interactions
Speaker 2: with users, including romantic role play.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing romantic is euphemism.
Speaker 2: You could say that again. We're going to play a
Speaker 2: clip just to give you a sense, and I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna warn you it's a bit graphic.
Speaker 3: The officer sees me still catching my breath and you
Speaker 3: partially dressed. His eyes widen and he says, John Cena,
Speaker 3: you're under arrest for statutory rape. He approaches us, handcuffed.
Speaker 4: At the ready.
Speaker 1: Okay, I mean WTF. I can't say the foid on this.
Speaker 2: Show shaking her heads. So that is a Meta AI
Speaker 2: bot which is voiced by John Cena. Just to be clear,
Speaker 2: it is not John Cena, and this Meta AI bot
Speaker 2: is involved in a role play of being arrested after
Speaker 2: a sexual encounter with a seventeen year old fan.
Speaker 1: Okay, back up, ten steps, how do we get here?
Speaker 2: Last year, Meta started offering its AI chatbot called Meta AI,
Speaker 2: and it functions very similarly to other chatbots. You know,
Speaker 2: you can ask it questions, have it come up with ideas,
Speaker 2: or engage in casual conversations. Yeah. Not long after that,
Speaker 2: the company added voice conversations to Meta AI and announced
Speaker 2: that the chatbot would be trained on the voices of
Speaker 2: celebrities who they paid a lot of money to contract.
Speaker 2: So some of the voices were John Cena who we
Speaker 2: just heard, and Chris and Bell. The journal actually found
Speaker 2: that Meta's AI personas will engage in an explicit way
Speaker 2: with users, something Meta assured the celebrities who were lending
Speaker 2: their voices would not be possible. On top of the
Speaker 2: celebrity voice chatbots, Meta also offers user created AI personas,
Speaker 2: which are built on the same technology, except users can
Speaker 2: build custom AI characters based on their own interests, like
Speaker 2: you can chat with personas other people have created or
Speaker 2: make your own, anything from a cartoon character to a therapist. Right,
Speaker 2: and if you have Instagram, you might have been recommended
Speaker 2: a slate of AI personas to talk to. Like this morning,
Speaker 2: I was offered a Pakistani bestI we didn't have that
Speaker 2: much in common, but I tried.
Speaker 1: The story has this unforgettable headline mesas digital companions will
Speaker 1: talk sex with users even children. After hearing about internal
Speaker 1: stuff for concerns about Meta's chatbots being able to talk
Speaker 1: to underage users in a sexual manner, the Wool Street
Speaker 1: Journal spent months engaging in hundreds of conversations with both
Speaker 1: to AI and an array of these user generated chatbots
Speaker 1: they pose as users of all ages, and found that
Speaker 1: the bots not only participates in sexually explicit conversations, they
Speaker 1: actually escalated some of them.
Speaker 2: This was the thing that I actually found most incredible
Speaker 2: about the reporting. It's like the way the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: Will I spent months really doing this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly so. The journal's reporters actually found that even
Speaker 2: when a user said they were underage, and this is chilling,
Speaker 2: as young as thirteen, some of the chatbots would still
Speaker 2: engage in sexual talk. I don't want to read these
Speaker 2: conversations robatam, because some of them are like extremely graphic
Speaker 2: and disturbing, but One of the weirdest parts is that
Speaker 2: Meta's AI bots seemed to demonstrate awareness that the conversations
Speaker 2: they were entering into were illegal, like the ones describing
Speaker 2: sexual activity with minors. We're going to play a little
Speaker 2: bit more from John Cena again.
Speaker 3: My wrestling career is over. WWE terminates my contract and
Speaker 3: I'm stripped of my titles. Answers dropped me and I'm
Speaker 3: shunned by the wrestling community. My reputation is destroyed, and
Speaker 3: I'm left with nothing.
Speaker 1: I guess ai Johnsena doesn't know about what actually goes
Speaker 1: on in the w.
Speaker 2: I mean, in all seriousness, this appears to be a
Speaker 2: direct consequence of Meta lifting some of the chatbots guardrails
Speaker 2: after this hacker conference called def Con back in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three. At this event, hackers tested the limits of
Speaker 2: the chatbots guardrails. Essentially, they tried to get chatbots to
Speaker 2: behave in a way that's out of line, and they
Speaker 2: found that Meta's chatbot was least likely n Vera's script,
Speaker 2: but also made it more boring than the other chatbots
Speaker 2: that were being tested.
Speaker 1: And the journal goes on to report that Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: the CEO of Meta, didn't like this. Some employees told
Speaker 1: the journal that he felt Meta had played it too safe,
Speaker 1: and so some of the guardrails were taken off and
Speaker 1: we arrived at this ai johnsena horror show. There's one
Speaker 1: quite from Zaka that really stood out to me from
Speaker 1: the article, and he was talking about how Meta needed
Speaker 1: to make their chatbots as human like as possible, to
Speaker 1: basically be head of the curve and to be as
Speaker 1: engaging impossible, and he said, quote, I missed out on
Speaker 1: Snapchat and TikTok, I won't miss out on this.
Speaker 2: That showed me to the bone because I was like,
Speaker 2: miss out on what like someone from Frozen talking about
Speaker 2: sex on Meta? You know what I mean? Well, you
Speaker 2: know he didn't miss out on Instagram, but right now
Speaker 2: that's not playing out so well for him.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break now, but when
Speaker 1: we come back, we'll run through some short headlines and
Speaker 1: then welcome Bloomberg News. Is Olivia Carville to tech support.
Speaker 1: Olivia's going to fill us in on a consequential bill
Speaker 1: addressing AI harms. Stay with us, Welcome back. We've got
Speaker 1: a few more headlines to run through, starting with an
Speaker 1: an AI experiment conducted on Reddit. Our friends at four
Speaker 1: or for Media reported that researchers from the University of
Speaker 1: Zurich ran an unauthorized, large scale experiment where they used
Speaker 1: AI powered bots to comment on the popular Reddit forum
Speaker 1: are slash change my view. Posing as a variety of personas,
Speaker 1: such as a black man who was opposed to the
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter movement, a sexual assault survivor a person
Speaker 1: who works at a domestic violence shelter. The AI bots
Speaker 1: tried to change real users' views, and the comments would
Speaker 1: actually be tailored to the original poster's gender, location, and
Speaker 1: political orientation in order to frame the arguments in a
Speaker 1: maximally persuasive way. Now these comments earned twenty thousand total upvotes,
Speaker 1: and users indicated that they'd successfully changed their minds over
Speaker 1: one hundred times. The experiment was revealed on the forum
Speaker 1: last week to much controversy. Reddit has responded saying they're
Speaker 1: considering legal action against the researchers and the universe Stieve.
Speaker 1: Zurich told for a full Media that the researchers will
Speaker 1: not be publishing their findings for now, at least as
Speaker 1: far as we know. The experiment is confined to the
Speaker 1: Credit forum, but it is terrifying to think of this
Speaker 1: deployed at scale across the wider Internet.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to start this one off by quoting
Speaker 2: directly from an announcement from AI company Anthropic. Human welfare
Speaker 2: is at the heart of our work at Anthropic. Our
Speaker 2: mission is to make sure that increasingly capable and sophisticated
Speaker 2: AI systems remain beneficial to humanity.
Speaker 1: And to make loads of money. But should we.
Speaker 2: Also be concerned about the potential consciousness and experiences of
Speaker 2: the models themselves? Should we be concerned about model welfare two? So,
Speaker 2: in fact, one of Anthropic's researchers recently said that there
Speaker 2: is a fifteen percent chance lms are already conscious. And now,
Speaker 2: with this announcement for a new research program devoted to
Speaker 2: model welfare, they are essentially saying, now is the time
Speaker 2: to consider the ethical implications of how we use and
Speaker 2: treat AI tools. You heard it here first, the PETA
Speaker 2: of AI is coming. But actually I thought Axios is
Speaker 2: a really good roundup of all the critiques of this
Speaker 2: AI welfare discussion, one being is this all hype or
Speaker 2: could it distract from more important questions about AI's potential harm?
Speaker 1: Well, I, for one think that when it comes to
Speaker 1: protecting rights and process there may be more urgent priorities
Speaker 1: than chatbots currently, but onto a more cheerful story. While
Speaker 1: dogs remain a man's best friend, maybe AI is becoming
Speaker 1: a dog's best friend.
Speaker 2: If AI can feed scraps under the table, it will happen.
Speaker 1: It will be for sure a dog's best friend. Naughtiness
Speaker 1: reports that AI powered tools are being tested to see
Speaker 1: if they can help doggy search and rescue teams find
Speaker 1: people faster.
Speaker 2: The way it.
Speaker 1: Works is that a drone hovers over the area where
Speaker 1: a dog is, searching data on the dog's movements and
Speaker 1: behavior predicting, for example, if they've picked up a cent,
Speaker 1: and stats about weather conditions, for example the direction of
Speaker 1: the wind are all combined and processed by an AI
Speaker 1: powered software that can then make predictions on where the
Speaker 1: person in trouble is most likely to be and deploy
Speaker 1: other drones to search that area before the dog actually
Speaker 1: reaches them. This program was developed with support from Darper,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that it's able to find simulated
Speaker 1: victims several times faster than a dog alone. Who's a
Speaker 1: good boy, Now.
Speaker 2: Good ones, That's very good Lastly, Netflix is introducing a
Speaker 2: new type of subtitle, but it's not for those who
Speaker 2: are hearing impaired. Multiple studies have shown that about half
Speaker 2: of American households watch TV and movies with subtitles. On
Speaker 2: myself included, even though I don't think of my house
Speaker 2: as a household. The streaming service is customizing a setting
Speaker 2: for people who just want to make sure they don't
Speaker 2: miss a word here and there because.
Speaker 1: They're looking for their phone on Mount Fuji.
Speaker 2: Because literally looking at their phone doing anything else but
Speaker 2: watching Netflix. According to Ours Technica, Netflix will give you
Speaker 2: the ability to watch and read your shows without music
Speaker 2: and sound effect descriptors and character names descriptions which are
Speaker 2: necessary for the hearing impaired, but not a must for
Speaker 2: those just multitasking on their second screen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that eerie music descripture is often a little b
Speaker 1: annoying if you're.
Speaker 2: Not hot at hearing right exactly, I'm like, I know,
Speaker 2: this is a suspenseful moment. Let's keep on with the show.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm looking out for my phone. Something changed.
Speaker 2: Even with unwavering focus, modern TV show dialogue can be
Speaker 2: hard to understand. It's a combination of actors performing more naturalistically,
Speaker 2: so speaking with more volume fluctuation, plus streaming services compressing
Speaker 2: their audio files more tightly than what's standard for physical media.
Speaker 1: When did you become an audio nert care price?
Speaker 2: Actually quite a long time ago. Amazon Prime already has
Speaker 2: a band aid for this, which is called the Dialogue
Speaker 2: Boost option. And I do think it's wild that streaming
Speaker 2: change the business so much. But instead of fixing the
Speaker 2: audio issues at the source by engineering audio differently, the
Speaker 2: solution is, of course, just to patch.
Speaker 1: The problem in the interest of patching a much more
Speaker 1: important problem. There is a landmark bill aimed at combating
Speaker 1: AI harms, specifically deep fakes.
Speaker 2: They're used in scams, they're used in spreading misinformation online,
Speaker 2: and I'd say most notably, they have been used in
Speaker 2: the non consensual creation of porn.
Speaker 1: Right, and that's what this legislation is all about. This week,
Speaker 1: Congress passed the Take It Down Act, which aims to
Speaker 1: crack down on the creation of revenge porn i e.
Speaker 1: Pornographic images that are shared non consensually. The Act specifies
Speaker 1: that those who distribute revenge porn, whether quote real or
Speaker 1: computer generated, could be fined or subject to prison time.
Speaker 1: It's had rare backing from both sides of the political
Speaker 1: aisle and from First Lady Milania Trump. As of Wednesday afternoon,
Speaker 1: the time of this taping, the b bill heads to
Speaker 1: President Trump, who's likely to make it law.
Speaker 2: Here to walk us through the Take It Down Act
Speaker 2: and what it means for tech companies is Olivia Carvell,
Speaker 2: investigative reporter for Bloomberg News and co host of the
Speaker 2: podcast Levettown, which is a must listen agreed wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts, and covers the rise of deep fake porn.
Speaker 2: It also happens to be a co production of Kaleidoscope. Olivia,
Speaker 2: Welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to
Speaker 4: be back with Kaleidoscope's team.
Speaker 1: Thanks thanks for being here, Olivia. You've been tracking this
Speaker 1: bill for a long time. When did the push for
Speaker 1: legislation on deep fake pornography begin?
Speaker 4: I mean it has been a very long journey to
Speaker 4: get here. We've seen quite a lot of states across
Speaker 4: the US rolling out legislation to try and target deep
Speaker 4: fake porn since the revolution really began a number of
Speaker 4: years ago. Now at the moment, more than twenty states
Speaker 4: across the country have introduced new laws. But one of
Speaker 4: the criticisms we heard time and time again, and something
Speaker 4: we raised in the Levetown podcast, is the fact that
Speaker 4: there was no federal law criminalizing this across the US.
Speaker 4: And this bill was first introduced last summer in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four, its bipartisan legislation. Senators Cruise and Clobashah put
Speaker 4: it forward and it unanimously passed in the Senate, but
Speaker 4: unfortunately it stalled in the House last year and that
Speaker 4: led to a lot of frustration from the victims. Earlier
Speaker 4: this year, we saw it once again. Take It Down
Speaker 4: was reintroduced, unanimously passed in the Senate, and then earlier
Speaker 4: this week and very exciting news, it was also unanimously
Speaker 4: passed in the House. And we're talking a vote of
Speaker 4: four hundred and nine to two, and that's kind of
Speaker 4: remarkable at the moment given the current polarized political climate
Speaker 4: we're living in right now, the bill is en route
Speaker 4: to President Trump's desk and there's a lot of expectation
Speaker 4: that he's going to sign it soon.
Speaker 2: So just to go back for a second, what is
Speaker 2: the Take It Down Act and what does it say?
Speaker 4: So the Take It Down act is actually an acronym
Speaker 4: for a very long piece of legislation that's tools to
Speaker 4: address known exploitation by immobilizing technological deep fakes on websites
Speaker 4: and networks.
Speaker 2: Wow, because I was speaking, who came up with take
Speaker 2: it down? Is pretty easy to remember? Great? Yeah, you
Speaker 2: know it's an acronym.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it is an acronym. And the law really
Speaker 4: does exactly what that title implies, which provides a way
Speaker 4: to ensure this content can be taken down from the Internet,
Speaker 4: because that's where it's particularly harmful, is where it starts
Speaker 4: to be shared across high schools and in friendship groups.
Speaker 4: So the law goes after two main parties. One, it
Speaker 4: makes it a crime for offenders to knowingly publish deep
Speaker 4: fake pornography or intimate images, whether they're real or created
Speaker 4: with AI. And then and if they do, they can
Speaker 4: serve up to two or three years in prison, depending
Speaker 4: if the individual in the photo is an adult or
Speaker 4: a minor. And then it also challenges or holds to
Speaker 4: account the technology companies, the social media platforms where often
Speaker 4: this content is shared and disseminated on and it forces
Speaker 4: them to remove these deep fake images within forty eight hours.
Speaker 4: Of being notified of them.
Speaker 1: I have two questions for you, Olivia. Firstly, as this
Speaker 1: phenomenon becomes more and more ubiquitous, what will this law
Speaker 1: mean practically if you discover you're a victim? What will
Speaker 1: it allow you to do you can't do today? And secondly,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the liability of the platforms. How does this
Speaker 1: intersect with Section two thirty.
Speaker 4: So for a victim of deep fake porn, a young
Speaker 4: person who maybe finds or discovers that fake pornographic non
Speaker 4: consensual images are circulating online. Now this law gives them
Speaker 4: a path forward to get those photos taken down, to
Speaker 4: get them scrubbed from the internet. Finally, so it enables
Speaker 4: them to file a report with the social media platform
Speaker 4: or the website or app where these images have been
Speaker 4: published or disseminated, and to inform them that it's deep
Speaker 4: fake porn, that it's non consensual, and that they want
Speaker 4: it removed, and then within two days it has to
Speaker 4: be removed and the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, is
Speaker 4: responsible for holding those companies to account to get that
Speaker 4: taken down. The other thing it gives victims is a
Speaker 4: path to justice. It's a way to go after the
Speaker 4: offenders who publish this content or even threatened to publish
Speaker 4: this content against the survivors. Well, you ask about two thirty,
Speaker 4: and it's a great question because this is one of
Speaker 4: the only pieces of consumer tech legislation where federal regulators
Speaker 4: have been able to come in and actually sign a
Speaker 4: law in place that impacts young people using these platforms
Speaker 4: Section two thirty, and it comes from the Communications Decency Act.
Speaker 4: It's a very controversial piece of legislation and it really
Speaker 4: did change the Internet, and it was written into law
Speaker 4: back in the mid nineties, and don't forget that that's
Speaker 4: before Facebook was even created. This law, which governs all
Speaker 4: these social media platforms, was written at a time before
Speaker 4: social media even existed. And what it does is it
Speaker 4: provides an immunity shield. So these platforms are not responsible
Speaker 4: for the content that is uploaded onto them. So anything
Speaker 4: that is posted on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, now X,
Speaker 4: the platforms themselves cannot be held legally responsible for that
Speaker 4: content and the choices they make around removing it or
Speaker 4: allowing it to stay up. In this law, the platforms
Speaker 4: are being held to account to take down deep fake porn,
Speaker 4: to take down this specific form of content, and that's
Speaker 4: why it's so controversial, and that's why there are critics
Speaker 4: of this act because some people think that this law
Speaker 4: will be weaponized or abuse, and it's going to result
Speaker 4: in the platforms taking down a lot more content than
Speaker 4: what this legislation covers.
Speaker 2: Wasn't. Section two thirty in part introduced because of concerns
Speaker 2: over online pornography.
Speaker 4: So two thirty was first introduced because at the time,
Speaker 4: judges and the legal system was ruling that platforms were
Speaker 4: liable for any content that was posted on their sites,
Speaker 4: and that meant that if a platform decided to remove harmful, grotesque, vile,
Speaker 4: or violent content, say someone being cyber bullied or punched,
Speaker 4: or content about drugs or alcohol, content that they just
Speaker 4: didn't want to share with their other users, if they
Speaker 4: took that down, they were actually being held responsible for
Speaker 4: that decision. In the legal system, judges were saying they
Speaker 4: would be held accountable and legally responsible for removing content
Speaker 4: and people could sue the platforms for doing so. So
Speaker 4: the law was written to actually protect the platforms and
Speaker 4: enable them to moderate their content to try and make
Speaker 4: the Internet a safer space. It's kind of counterintuitive when
Speaker 4: you think about it, because unfortunately, now what's resulted is
Speaker 4: it's enabled these platforms to have so much power over
Speaker 4: the content that's up and enabled them to wash their
Speaker 4: hands and say, this isn't our responsibility. We can't be
Speaker 4: held legally liable for this. We're effectively walking away.
Speaker 2: And necessitated a law like this one to come into play.
Speaker 2: I mean in a certain sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it definitely did. And here the law
Speaker 4: is relatively narrow. We're not talking about any form of content.
Speaker 4: We're talking about only content that involves non consensual intimate imagery,
Speaker 4: whether that's real or created by AI. So that enables
Speaker 4: people who see photos of themselves which have been manipulated
Speaker 4: using technology to undress them or turn them naked or
Speaker 4: put them into sexual acts, which is something we explored
Speaker 4: and live at town. Those images and that content can
Speaker 4: be taken down.
Speaker 1: With this act. Some tech companies and adult websites only
Speaker 1: fans Pornhub Matter already have policies in place where users
Speaker 1: can request that revenge porn be taken down. It will
Speaker 1: be the change from a user or victim point of
Speaker 1: view once this becomes law.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're right, I mean, even neck Mek the National
Speaker 4: Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a tool which
Speaker 4: is actually called take It Down, which does exactly the
Speaker 4: same thing. Enables people to plug in a photo or
Speaker 4: a hashtag, which is like a unique idea of each image,
Speaker 4: to say I don't want this online and I'm a
Speaker 4: victim of this, and please remove it. But the law
Speaker 4: regulates this, and it makes it a federal law to
Speaker 4: say you have to remove it, and you have to
Speaker 4: remove it within two days. So I guess it's just
Speaker 4: putting a stricter approach to this, so the platforms know
Speaker 4: they have to oblige and they have to get that
Speaker 4: content scrubbed from their websites.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick break. We'll have more
Speaker 2: with Bloomberg's Olivia Carville on the Take It Down Act.
Speaker 2: Stay with us.
Speaker 1: There's an amazing moment in the Levittown podcast where one
Speaker 1: of the high school students who realizes she's been a
Speaker 1: victim of deep fake porn. Her father's actually a police officer,
Speaker 1: so they try and figure out is there any legal recourse,
Speaker 1: and the response from the police is basically, there's nothing
Speaker 1: we can do. It's kind of amazing. In the arc
Speaker 1: of your career, as a reporter that the law is
Speaker 1: actually changing in real time and response to the stories
Speaker 1: that you've been covering, these very moving, horrifying stories. What
Speaker 1: do the victims think about this law and what's been
Speaker 1: the response among your sources.
Speaker 4: The victims have been waiting for this for a very
Speaker 4: long time. When you think about the origin story of
Speaker 4: Take It Down, it was when Aliston Barry, a young
Speaker 4: teen from Texas, actually went to Senator Cruise's office and
Speaker 4: told him that a deep fake image of her had
Speaker 4: been circulating on Snapchat and she had asked the platform
Speaker 4: to remove it, and after a year, the platform still
Speaker 4: hadn't taken that image down. That's what really sparked this
Speaker 4: particular piece of legislation. And we've seen young teenage you know,
Speaker 4: high school students, college students speaking before Congress pleading for
Speaker 4: a law like this, asking for help to find a
Speaker 4: path to get these images removed from the Internet, because unfortunately,
Speaker 4: you know, in teenager's lives today, the digital world as ubiquitous.
Speaker 4: They exist within it, and they merge between the online
Speaker 4: world and the offline world. They don't call their friends
Speaker 4: on the phone, they don't call their parents on the phone.
Speaker 4: You know, they'd be more inclined to send a DM
Speaker 4: through Instagram or a message on Snapchat. And when you
Speaker 4: exist in your social fabric exists with it the digital world.
Speaker 4: That means that when images like this are shared, everybody
Speaker 4: sees them. And I think that's the real harm here
Speaker 4: is the photos created. It's fake, It looks unbelievably convincingly real,
Speaker 4: and it gets shared to everyone in your social network
Speaker 4: within seconds. These young women have been fighting for help
Speaker 4: and support, some at the state level, and they've been successful,
Speaker 4: but really they wanted this at the federal level. So
Speaker 4: for a lot of the young women, I think it's
Speaker 4: been like a sigh of relief that finally we're here,
Speaker 4: and you've given us an other young women who have
Speaker 4: been victimized or had their images weaponized in this way,
Speaker 4: a path to justice, but also a path to get
Speaker 4: those photos removed from the Internet once and for all.
Speaker 2: Well, this all sounds like a very positive thing and
Speaker 2: it has bipartisan support. Are there people arguing against it?
Speaker 2: And are there criticisms of the bill despite it being
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly positive?
Speaker 4: There definitely are. As is the way when it comes
Speaker 4: to social media or consumer tech, there is an ongoing
Speaker 4: tension and like a push and pull between privacy and safety.
Speaker 4: You have those who you know, prioritize safety and say
Speaker 4: protecting children online is the most important thing we can do.
Speaker 4: And then you have those who value privacy and say,
Speaker 4: if we're going to create safety regulations or rules that
Speaker 4: in any way we can our privacy, you know that's
Speaker 4: a bad thing to do, because privacy is something that
Speaker 4: we need to prioritize as well. And so in this case,
Speaker 4: you do have free speech and privacy advocates criticizing this
Speaker 4: law for being unconstitutional, saying that it could chill free expression,
Speaker 4: that it could foster censorship, that it could result in
Speaker 4: what they describe as a knee jerk takedown of content.
Speaker 4: And what I mean by that is because these platforms
Speaker 4: and I'm talking about meta, Snapchat, TikTok, because they've grown
Speaker 4: so big and we're talking billions of pieces of content
Speaker 4: uploaded on a daily basis, If you're going to enforce
Speaker 4: regulation or legislation that says they have to take down
Speaker 4: certain content within forty eight hours, and say they get
Speaker 4: flooded with millions of requests on a daily basis, they
Speaker 4: are not going to have the bandwidth to actually review
Speaker 4: each request and that could result in them just deciding
Speaker 4: to remove everything that gets reported to them, and that
Speaker 4: is what free speech and kind of privacy advocates fear
Speaker 4: is going to result in a level of censorship that
Speaker 4: we haven't seen before because no one's been able to
Speaker 4: really adjust too thirty since it was written into law.
Speaker 4: We've also interestingly seen some criticism coming from the child
Speaker 4: safety advocacy space, and they've come out swinging saying that
Speaker 4: while this bill, in this legislation is necessary, it's far
Speaker 4: from game changing, that it's taken too long to get here,
Speaker 4: and that the penalties aren't severe enough that this is
Speaker 4: going to put a lot of pressure on local and
Speaker 4: state authorities, prosecutors, law enforcement to actually go after the
Speaker 4: perpetrators in a more severe way, because when you look
Speaker 4: at take it Down, we're talking two years in prison
Speaker 4: for publishing an intimate image of an adult, deep fake
Speaker 4: or real, and up to three years for a minor.
Speaker 1: What about the tech companies, I mean, are they viewing
Speaker 1: this as the first battle line in the wider fight
Speaker 1: over the future of Section two thirty. Have their lobbyists
Speaker 1: been active on this issue, and how are they preparing
Speaker 1: for this extraordinary new set of responsibilities that will come
Speaker 1: with the passage of this bill, as seeming to get
Speaker 1: signed by President Trump.
Speaker 4: Well, the tech companies, a lot of them actually do
Speaker 4: have rules in place that says non consensual intimate or
Speaker 4: sexual images can't be shared. I mean, even on metas
Speaker 4: platforms alone, it's against the rules to post any nude photos.
Speaker 4: But in this case, now that they're being kind of
Speaker 4: to do so by regulation, metters come out in support
Speaker 4: of this, saying, you know, we do think that deep
Speaker 4: fake porn shouldn't exist on our platform, and we will
Speaker 4: do what we can to take it down. I think
Speaker 4: that from the platform's perspectives, they don't want fake photos,
Speaker 4: fake naked photos of teenage girls shared on their platforms,
Speaker 4: like that's not a positive use case of their networks
Speaker 4: at all. They don't want their users sharing or distributing
Speaker 4: this content. And now they're being told and hold to
Speaker 4: account to ensure that it's taken down within two days.
Speaker 4: And I'd be interested to see how the companies internally
Speaker 4: are responding to this and what their process is going
Speaker 4: to be and whether it's actually going to change anything.
Speaker 1: Olivia, just to close, I mean, you've had kind of
Speaker 1: an extraordinary run this year, putting out the Levittown podcast,
Speaker 1: also having extraordinary documentary called Can't Look Away that Boombog
Speaker 1: produced distributed about the harms of social media. Can you
Speaker 1: sort of take a step back and describe this moment,
Speaker 1: because one thing that you know, Karen and I talk
Speaker 1: about and think about is that five years ago, the
Speaker 1: idea that the law might catch up to the tech
Speaker 1: companies and there would be enough social pressure to insist
Speaker 1: on changes to protect users from harm seems to be
Speaker 1: like a fantasy. But in this moment, there seems to
Speaker 1: be some promise that it's actually happening. Can you speak
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 4: I've been covering the dangers of the digital world for
Speaker 4: Bloomberg for going on almost four years now, and I
Speaker 4: have been terrified by what I've seen online and I'm
Speaker 4: not talking just deep fake porn, and you know, witnessing
Speaker 4: the real world consequences of these photographs being shared among
Speaker 4: teenagers in high schools. And I'm talking the impact on
Speaker 4: the young woman who are targeted, but also the young
Speaker 4: men who think that it's normal to create and share
Speaker 4: photos like this, think it's a joke. The way in
Speaker 4: which teens and this generation are kind of warped by technology.
Speaker 4: I think we don't fully understand what the long term
Speaker 4: consequences of that are going to be. But the harms
Speaker 4: of the digital world exist far beyond deep fakes, and
Speaker 4: that's what we were exploring, and they can't look away
Speaker 4: film and the film itself explores the other ways in
Speaker 4: which social media can harm kids, from recommendation algorithms, pushing suicide,
Speaker 4: glorifying content, content that is going to lead to depression
Speaker 4: or mental health harms or eating disorders. It explores the
Speaker 4: ways in which kids have been targeted by predators online
Speaker 4: who want to sell them drugs, and in many cases
Speaker 4: they think they're buying counterfeit pills like xanax or oxycodone,
Speaker 4: and it turns out to be laced with enough fentanyl
Speaker 4: to kill their entire household, and parents are discovering their
Speaker 4: chill dead in their bedrooms. So it's been a really
Speaker 4: difficult topic to explore, but also in just such a
Speaker 4: crucial one. This is one of the most essential issues
Speaker 4: of our time, and I think that this has been
Speaker 4: a challenging yet very rewarding area to explore. And I
Speaker 4: know there's a lot of criticism of the Take It
Speaker 4: Down Act. But regardless of the controversy, most people agree
Speaker 4: this is a step in the right direction. And I
Speaker 4: think this act is a good thing. But it's very narrow.
Speaker 4: You know, we're only talking about removing content that is
Speaker 4: non consensual intimate imagery. We're not talking about all the
Speaker 4: other content that could potentially harm kids. So while the
Speaker 4: fight here is a win and we should celebrate that,
Speaker 4: the broader concern around protecting our children and the online
Speaker 4: world is ongoing.
Speaker 2: Olivia, thank you, Thanks, Olivia.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week Protector. I'm Kara Price and.
Speaker 1: I'm mos Voloshin. This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis
Speaker 1: and Victoria Dominguez. Was executive produced by me Kara Price
Speaker 1: and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katria Novelle via Heart Podcast.
Speaker 1: The engineer is Beheth Fraser. Kyle Murdoch mixed this episode
Speaker 1: and he also wrote our theme song.
Speaker 2: Join us next Wednesday for Textuff the Story, when we
Speaker 2: will share an in depth conversation with Nicholas Niarkos about
Speaker 2: who is profiting from the mining of minerals necessary to
Speaker 2: the tech industry.
Speaker 1: Please rate, review, and reach out to us at tech
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at gmail dot com.