Editor-In-Chief Of RT, Russia’s Main Propaganda Network, Says Many Of Its Presenters Are AI-Generated – If You Can Believe Her
RT, formerly Russia Today, has appeared a few times here on Techdirt. As the long article about RT on Wikipedia explains, the TV channel has morphed from an attempt to create a state-supported international news network along the lines of the BBC or France 24, but one that offered a Russian perspective on the world, to something that is now regarded as little more than a mouthpiece for Kremlin propaganda (disclosure: I was interviewed by Russia Today a couple of times over a decade ago.).
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, RT is now banned in many Western nations, but still commands audiences in other countries and online. As a result, considerable resources are still expended on RT and on the programs it produces. It is also continuing to explore new ways to reach people, and perhaps to save money, judging by a story on the independent Russian media site Agentstvo. It reports on statements made by RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan (original in Russian, translation by DeepL):
A ‘significant proportion’ of RT’s TV presenters do not exist, they have been created by artificial intelligence, Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the state channel, told TVC [TV Centre, a channel owned by the city administration of Moscow]. According to the propagandist, the artificial presenters also run their own social networks.
‘We have a significant proportion of TV presenters who do not exist. They don’t exist, they are artificial completely. This person doesn’t exist, and never did. This face never existed, we generated the voice, everything else, the character,’ the RT chief said.
One of the non-existent presenters had invited people to subscribe to her Telegram channel, promising the first readers [of the Telegram channel] amnesty ‘when we come to power,’ Simonyan retold the joke of her ‘colleague.’
Of course, with the head of a propaganda channel, there is always the risk that such statements are just more propaganda designed to mislead. But using AI-generated presenters makes a lot of sense here. They will never go off script, as humans might; the script that they read can be tweaked endlessly without the presenter getting tired or bored; and the spoken words can even be translated into the other languages in which RT broadcasts, read out by the same presenter with different mouth movements, or by a completely different one. A later comment from Simonyan seems to confirm this is happening:
RT has given up on broadcast editors; now images are selected or created by AI, Simonyan noted. This makes the process much cheaper, she explained. AI is involved in the dubbing of a new film about the Great Patriotic War [Russia’s name for the Eastern Front in World War II], using it to re-translate Vladimir Putin’s words into other languages, Simonyan said.
Journalism, as the ‘dark one’ of professions, will eventually disappear, like the coachmen did, the propagandist believes.
Moving towards a completely virtual, AI-generated network, complete with AI presenters and editors, would raise huge questions if the plan were to present conventional news reporting or features, with the underlying aim of presenting facts and the truth (whatever that means). But as a network that is designed to broadcast Russian propaganda, those questions are irrelevant. All that matters for Simonyan and her ultimate boss, Vladimir Putin, is whether the propaganda works, and if it can be generated in larger volumes, and more cheaply. Unfortunately, as is evident from everyday experience online, AI-generated fakes and lies do indeed work remarkably well. What is less clear is if other broadcasters, especially state-funded ones, will be able to resist the pressure to start using more AI, at least for backroom editorial functions, but maybe even for presenters, in order to compete in this brave new (artificial) world.