AI-Generated Joe Rogan Interview Sounds Worryingly Realistic

July 26, 2024

Controversial comedian Joe Rogan has spoken out after a series of fake versions of his podcast made with artificial intelligence (AI) appeared on YouTube.

People who watched the videos, including one where Rogan seemingly interviews former U.S. President Donald Trump, labeled the deepfakes as "impressive."

The scripts for both episodes were created using the AI chatbot, ChatGPT, while other AI technologies were used to recreate the men's voices.

"This is going to get very slippery, kids," Rogan tweeted on April 11 after a fake podcast with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was published to YouTube.

Dubbed The Joe Rogan AI Experience, the uploaders declared the episode with Altman was "intended as an exploration of the capabilities of language models."

Since that fake episode was released other people have tried their hand at creating their own version of Rogan's podcast using ChatGPT, including YouTube user, Joel Morton.

His 36-minute video was posted to Reddit, where people debated how authentic it sounded.

"So obviously fake, couldn't even get passed the 1min mark," wrote one person.

Another added: "Sure, but it still VERY impressive."

And a third pointed out: "I don't think the other commenters quite get the point here. It's a matter of time before we have completely convincing fake audio produced within minutes by using GPT prompts to make a script and running it through this. It's not there right now, but imagine in a few years (probably weeks/months)."

Rogan isn't the only celebrity to recently get the AI treatment.

U.S. President t Joe Biden became an unlikely rap star on TikTok, as Schmoyoho, a YouTube channel run by Evan, Andrew, Michael and Sarah Gregory, better known as the Gregory Brothers, made a deepfake video of him performing hip hop.

Biden was made to mimic the styles of popular rappers, either alone or with another public figure. The clips use AI audio of the president and a combination of deepfake images, including Biden sitting on a basketball hoop, and some real photos.

As the technology around computer-created synthetic media improves, there have been growing concerns they might be used to spread misinformation around key events such as elections.

"The potential for AI-generated deep-fake videos, text-based chatbots, and voice-synthesis technologies to disrupt elections in 2024 is nearly limitless, especially as the code for powerful AI large language models leak to the worst parts of the internet like 4Chan," wrote a group of former politicians for Newsweek.

They included Timothy Wirth, former senator from Colorado, Richard Gephardt, former congressman from Missouri, and Jonathan M. Winer, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, are members of the civic group, Keep Our Republic. Kerry Healey, former Lt. governor of Massachusetts and Congressman Gephardt are co-chairs of the Council for Responsible Social Media.

"No doubt campaign lies, immense data gathering, and biased algorithms are not new concepts. What is new is the scale at which these tools can now be used to further polarize our society," they argued.

"It's led some to call for an outright moratorium on AI development, but to us, that's a bit extreme. Instead, our focus should be on making sure we control AI, and not the other way around. We need to focus especially on how to protect our political system."

Uncommon Knowledge

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