Utah Valley University student researchers found half of the viewers couldn’t tell the difference between fake and real, and some thought AI content was more trustworthy.

Elections officials in Utah and nationwide are facing an onslaught of disinformation from people trying to discredit democratic institutions, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said Monday, and it requires that voters be “vigilant” and trust the systems in place.

Henderson’s comments came as students at Utah Valley University presented the results of their research on people’s ability to recognize a deepfake video generated with artificial intelligence.

Half of those students surveyed in their research could not tell a deepfake from an actual human, and, in many instances, the deepfake was considered more knowledgeable, trustworthy and persuasive than a human speaker.

Student researchers using eye-tracking software and measuring physical reactions also found that subjects were more engaged with deepfakes than with videos of an actual person and they also experienced more confusion.

Henderson said that sometimes, amid the “disinformation,” there are legitimate concerns raised “but sometimes those questions and concerns are raised because people are trying deliberately to undermine our confidence and faith and trust in our democratic process.”

“The tools may be different, the methods may be different, but the attempts to dissuade, the attempts to undermine, the attempts to trick people, that’s nothing new,” she said, “but it is something that we have to be continually vigilant and guard against.”

Henderson, as lieutenant governor, is the director of state elections. She also is running for reelection this year with Gov. Spencer Cox. In June, a deepfake circulated of Cox purportedly admitting to election improprieties.

The Utah Valley University students’ project was the first phase in testing how convincing AI-generated images can be. Brandon Amacher, director of Emerging Tech Lab and an instructor of national security at UVU who oversaw the students’ work, said the goal was to quantify the problem...   Source