David Pocock vs AI

The year is nineteen thirty four, the setting is Scotland. Startling photos have emerged, appearing to capture the Lochness Monster. Fast forward ninety years to twenty twenty four to an election campaign in Australia and a video is released of a prime minister promising to ban gambling.

Ads on all forms of gambling advertising, digital and both.

A fake designed specifically to deceive. And while humans have always had a tendency to mislead each other, what's new is the technology. It's now easier than ever to create highly realistic fake content and we're only just starting to see how wide ranging and insidious the impact will be. I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM today Independent Senator David Pocock on his new bill to crack down on deep fakes and why he thinks the government

It would be great to be with you.

So you've been in the public eye for a very long time now, and I wonder have you been aware of people making deep fakes about you?

Not a deep fake?

I when Back when I was playing professional rugby, there were a couple of scams where, you know, someone was just using a photo of me to flog off like protein powders or something, and it was harder than it should have been to try and get them taken down. I think they're on Facebook or you know, some social media site, but you know, that's just a photo. Now we're firmly in the era of AI and deep fakes, and yeah, that's just a whole other level.

Yeah, I want to get into all of that. But I wonder when that was happening. I mean, it must have felt strange to see your image used in that way, and I mean, did you kind of have much recourse to stop it.

I think my manager ended up helping contact the social media company and get it taken down. But you know, that was kind of just it. It was very very hard to do anything else, And yeah, it was. It didn't feel great having some company selling questionable, questionable products using your name. And you know, I think we're seeing this across the board. We know that scams are on

Yeah, so, as you say, as AI has come into view, the scope of this has just exploded. And this week you introduced a bill into the Senate to crack down on deep fakes. So tell me what's in the bill.

Well, my bill basically says that you own your face and you own your voice. Australians should own their likeness, that is part of them, and you should be able to deep fake someone's face or voice, create a video

What about if someone unwittingly shared fake imagery?

Very little you can do there, and then that is very clear in the bill you have to knowingly be sharing what is clearly a non consensual deep fake. It's very much focused at the creation of them and so being able to straw a bit of a lie I'm the sand and say like, this is not okay. We're entering this this very different world where you can now put a few prompts and a few images potentially some clips of someone speaking or video and generate their likeness

And so tell me a bit more about I guess the problem that you're trying to fix here, because this idea that you know, we should own our own face, it seems obvious, it seems like common sense. But what is the current reality. What recourse to people have at the moment if a fake image or a fake video of them is shared without their knowledge or consent very little.

I mean, you know, contact the Facebook complaints team, good luck, contact Instagram like there there is there is no sort of designated complaints pathway. And a big part of this bill is actually to give the e Safety Commission of those powers so you can get in touch and say, hey, this is a deep fac of me. I didn't consent to this, this is this I don't want this up there, and that they can then issue a directive to the social media company to take it down.

And then, as I said, you then have.

Some sort of recourse through the courts if it has genuinely caused you you damage. So you know, I think this is really about our laws evolving with technology and putting some safeguards in place, engaging in the in the debate around AI, I'm really concerned that you have a lot of companies and it seems politicians focus on all of the upside. This is so amazing for productivity, for our economy, for all these things, and yet we're not actually looking at well, there are probably some real.

Downsides to this.

One is pretend this sort of identity theft essentially replicating someone without their consent, and so I do think this task is urgent and really have been saying to the government for years now, you've got to get cracking on this because AI is moving fast and you're certainly.

Not coming up how AI can disrupt elections and how political parties exempt themselves from the rules that everyone else has to follow. Let's talk a little bit more about the implications when this kind of material is put out there. We could use a specific example. During the last election campaign, you created fake videos of Dutton and alb and Easy to highlight how easy it is to do that they were obviously fake.

That my government will be introducing legislation into the Parliament, so we'll see a three year, phased in complete ban on all forms of gambling advertising.

Alvin Easy, I think the one that you created was promising to ban gambling ads, which.

He's obviously did that.

So tell me a bit about how deep fakes have been used in politics here and overseas, and then I suppose the effect on the public when those kinds of videos are put out there.

In the last parliament, I really urged the government to act before the election to rule out the use of deep fakes and political advertising. They didn't have any interest in it, thankfully, it didn't seem to play a part in our election. But there are examples from South Korea and the US where deep fakes of politicians were created.

In the South Korea example, the parliament.

They acted very quickly to put some very heavy penalties.

On the use of deep fakes in elections.

In the US, we saw a voice clone of than President Biden tell people not to turn up in one of the primaries.

What a bunch of malarkey. We know the value of voting democratic when our votes count. It's important that you save your vote for the November election. We'll need your help in electing Democrats up and down the ticket. Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again.

So you know, there's I think huge potential to destabilize the democratic processes. That's one thing, and I think that should have been a priority. And hopefully for the next section we'll have some safeguards in place, and can we talk about the issue.

I guess a bit more broadly than just deep fakes. I mean, you made a number of recommendations to the Senate Committee on Adopting AI, and that was all about how AI should be regulated in particular to protect the political system. But when you look at how quickly the technology is moving, what do you think we need to see in terms of guardrails.

Well, I mean at the press conference, I say, when I announced this, the Member for Curtain, Kate Cheney and Independent from w A was calling for an AI safety Institute. I see today the government has announced they're going to do it, which is which is a great thing. I think that's a step forward. But again we're sort of on the back foot here. Everyone knows how fast AI

These are the things you need to put in place.

Then I think we need an overarching AI Safety Act. This is the kind of technology where you can't constantly be legislating against it. We actually need some broad safeguards. This is what you can use it for, this is what you can't use it for. And we need to then use that, I guess to connect with like minded countries you know, the EU, the UK, Canada and ensure

So I think that's one thing.

I think we're also really not talking about potential impacts on labor markets, on people's jobs, whether that's white collar jobs.

And I think particularly sort of entry.

Level jobs, like who is going to be able to get those entry level jobs if there are you know, AI agents able to do this sort of work. And then you look at companies like Amazon and they are you know, full steam ahead on trying to automate so much of their supply chain and even delivery. So I think these are very real risks that for a long time we've thought, well, that's just a long way over the horizon, that's not worry about it. But I really

What about on the idea of how political parties collect and use data. Do you have concerns about how that data is retained and whether or not it is used to train AA?

I do.

I mean, you know, this is something Independence have been banging on about when it comes to data harvesting. You know, major parties send out these forms saying, hey, do you want to do your postal vote? It kind of looks like an AEC official form. You send them all this data and then they, you know, put it into their system. The major parties have exempted themselves from the Privacy Act, from the Spam Act. I just don't think that that

And the government does currently have a review into AI underway. It's set to wrap by the end of the year. What would you like to see come out of it?

Well, I mean they did a lot of reviewing in the last term of parliament, so I'd be interested what came of those reviews. I would hope that there would be a broad AI sort of safety act that would actually look at all these things in a really holistic way and put some safeguards in place. I have been worried about the influence of industry. Seems like there's been a big shift in the government sort of talking points

When you say industry, you mean what tech industry talking points?

Yeah, big tech, you know, open AI.

Yeah, all the all the all the players who seem to have a endless supply of money and a genuinely in a in a race to dominate this space.

Well, Devid, thank you so much for your time.

Thanks Ruby.

By the way, what is the latest on the Parliamentary Sports Club? But you are you back playing?

I'm not actually, you know, publicly they said I was invited back, but I haven't heard a word from them. So I've just been doing my own thing in the mornings, running with the dog what's the leading flycatcher? Chasing a little sparrow hawk this morning, which is pretty fun.

So waiting for the official invite, but not sure if it's coming.

Well, I actually I have no interest in going back while they are sort of this cash for access scheme. I totally disagree with the whole the whole setup, and so I don't know, we'll see. They've kind of said the they may review the policy. But I mean one of the things I'm concerned about is that a lot of people just think, well, this is just normal and this is how things operate, and I think that kind of says a lot about the.

Problem with it.

Also in the news, Labor has told government departments and agencies to find savings up to five percent of their budgets as it tries to reign in the deficit. Finance Minister Katie Gallaher has denied the call amounts to cuts, but unions and independents are warning it could mean job losses in the public service and hit agencies such as