Stanford prof accused of using AI to fake testimony in Minnesota case against conservative YouTuber
Jeff Hancock, a professor of communications and founding father of the vaunted faculty’s Social Media Lab, supplied an professional declaration in a case keen a satirical conservative YouTuber named Christopher Kohls. The court case is set Minnesota’s most up-to-date ban on political deepfakes, which the plaintiffs argue is an assault on free speech.
Hancock’s testimony used to be submitted to the court by Ellison, who is arguing in desire of the regulations. Hancock is “popular for his study on how participants use deception with technology, from sending texts and emails to detecting untrue online critiques,” according to Stanford’s web blueprint.
However the plaintiff’s legal professionals comprise asked the Minnesota federal resolve hearing the case to brush apart the testimony, charging that Hancock cited a untrue survey.
WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?
A Stanford professor is accused of utilizing an AI language model to jot down an professional declaration. (Getty Photography)
“[The] Declaration of Prof. Jeff Hancock cites a survey that would no longer exist,” legal professionals argued in a most up-to-date 36-web page memo. “No article by the title exists.”
The “survey” used to be known as “The Affect of Deepfake Videos on Political Attitudes and Behavior” and used to be purportedly printed in the Journal of Data Abilities & Politics. The Nov. 16 submitting notes that the journal is legitimate, but had never printed a survey by that name.
“The newsletter exists, but the cited pages belong to unrelated articles,” the legal professionals argued. “Seemingly, the survey used to be a ‘hallucination’ generated by an AI sizable language model fancy ChatGPT.”
“Plaintiffs attain no longer know how this hallucination peril up in Hancock’s declaration, but it absolutely calls your complete doc into anticipate, especially when worthy of the commentary contains no methodology or analytic logic whatsoever.”
The doc also calls out Ellison, arguing that “the conclusions that Ellison most depends on don’t comprise any methodology slack them and consist entirely of professional bid-so.”
“Hancock might perchance maybe comprise cited a proper survey the same to the proposition in paragraph 21,” the memo states. “However the existence of a fictional citation Hancock (or his assistants) didn’t even bother to click calls into anticipate the quality and veracity of your complete declaration.”
BIDEN EXECUTIVE ORDER FOR ‘WOKE’ ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CALLED ‘SOCIAL CANCER’
Microsoft Bing Chat and ChatGPT AI chat applications are viewed on a cell tool on this photo illustration in Warsaw, Poland, on July 21, 2023. (Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto by strategy of Getty Photography)
The memorandum also doubles down on the claim that the citation is bogus, noting the a few searches legal professionals went by to investigate cross-check to detect the survey.
“The title of the alleged article, and even a snippet of it, would no longer seem on anywhere on the earn as listed by Google and Bing, basically the most often-gentle engines like google,” the doc states. “Shopping Google Student, a if truth be told professional search engine for instructional papers and patent publications, unearths no articles matching the description of the citation authored by ‘Hwang’ [the purported author] that involves the term ‘deepfake.’”
“Per chance this used to be merely a reproduction-paste error? It’s no longer,” the submitting later flatly states. “The article doesn’t exist.”
The attorneys concluded that, if the declaration comprise been partially fabricated, it is a ways entirely unreliable and would perchance be brushed off from court consideration.
“The declaration of Prof. Hancock might perchance well peaceable be excluded in its entirety because no longer no longer up to a few of it is a ways according to fabricated self-discipline cloth seemingly generated by an AI model, which calls into anticipate its conclusory assertions,” the doc concluded. “The court might perchance well request into the source of the fabrication and additional stride might perchance maybe be warranted.”
Minnesota Prison professional Classic Keith Ellison arrives to focus on on stage in the middle of the third day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Heart on August 21, 2024, in Chicago, Illinois. (Getty Photography)
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Fox News Digital reached out to Ellison, Hancock and Stanford University for comment.
Andrea Margolis is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Enterprise. Readers can send yarn pointers to [email protected].
