Instagram CEO defends leaving up ‘deepfaked’ video of Mark Zuckerberg because ‘the damage is done’ – as he says the company is struggling to define a policy on doctored clips
- The head of Instagram says the company is unsure of what do with deepfakes
- In an interview, Adam Mosseri, said the company doesn’t have a policy yet
- Mosseri’s statements come as a response to an interview with CBS’ Gayle King
- King asked Instagram hasn’t removed a fake video that contains their logo
- Fervor over faked videos continue to rise with worries over misinformation
The CEO of Instagram has defended the company’s decision not to take down a deepfaked video of Mark Zuckerberg two weeks after the doctored video was reported.
Adam Mosseri told CBS’ Gayle King – in his first US television interview since taking over the platform last year – that the company hasn’t yet formulated an official policy on AI-altered video called ‘deepfakes’, and until then taking action would be ‘inappropriate.’
Mosseri said, ‘I don’t feel good about it,’ but said there is no rush to remove the video, in part because ‘the damage is done.’
Mosseri’s comments about deepfakes come as a response to King’s questioning about a faked video of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg taken from an actual interview with CBSN in 2017.
The doctored video features a fairly convincing Zuckerberg next to a superimposed CBSN logo talking about how Facebook wields power over its users.
CBS first reported the video to Instagram on June 12. As of June 25, the video was still up, and Mosseri suggested it would not be taken down soon.
In the faked video, Zuckerberg appears to say: ‘Imagine this for a second: One man with total control of billions of peoples stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures.
‘I owe it all to Spectre. Spectre showed me that whoever controls the data, controls the future.’
CBS has repeatedly asked the company to remove the video citing trademark law, however, Facebook, which owns Instagram, has declined to prune the video from its platform due to First Amendment concerns.
The video has since logged millions of views.
The use of algorithms to fake and manipulate video has garnered an increasing amount of attention as of late as skeptics warn that the technology could be used by bad actors to spread misinformation and even influence political campaigns.
Mosseri said that the company has yet to take down a deepfaked video containing the CBS logo as Instagram formulates a uniform policy.
Deepfaking AI has already been used to create digitally-altered videos of world leaders, including former President Barack Obama and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
In June, members of the US House of Representatives held an unprecedented hearing on the technology amid concerns that it could threaten national security.
While Mosseri admitted that the video is troubling, he says that the company is taking a ‘principled’ approach to how to deal the potential threat.
The biggest priority, he told King, wasn’t necessarily in deleting videos after the fact, but in identifying the fakes before they have a chance to make the rounds.
‘Well, we don’t have a policy against deepfakes currently,’ Mosseri told King in the interview.
‘We are trying to evaluate if we wanted to do that and if so, how you would define deepfakes.
‘If a million people see a video like that in the first 24 hours or the first 48 hours, the damage is done. So that conversation, though very important, currently, is moot.’
Despite seemingly recognizing the threat that deepfaked videos may pose for the sanctity of elections and information, Mosseri said there is a balance to be struck in Instagram’s response to their foray into the Facebook ecosystem.
‘Right now we try to balance safety … and speech. And that balance can be tricky,” he said in the interview.
