@eliothiggins.bsky.social Profile picture
Mar 16, 2023 15 tweets 9 min read Read on X
Playing around with #midjourneyv5 I decided to see if it could create realistic news images, so here's the entirely fictional Ukrainian peace talks between France, the US, Russia and Ukraine: ImageImageImageImage
It struggles a bit with Zelenskyy, but overall it does a pretty good job of creating entirely fictional images, and I can only assume this will get better. You have to wonder what sort of fake news could be created with #midjourneyv5 ImageImageImageImage
Here's photos from Vladimir Putin's entirely made up war crimes trial, via #midjourneyv5 ImageImage
Donald Trump's entirely fictional perp walk. I do appreciate that #midjourneyv5 has got the tie length just perfect for Trump. ImageImageImage
I redid "Donald Trump perp walk" and added "news footage" on the end that gave it an interest effect that makes it look like it's a screenshot from a video, hides the fact it's fabricated. Image
Someone asked for "Belarusian 2020 protests", what's interesting here is #midjourneyv5 put covid masks on nearly everyone. Image
Here's a previously unreleased image from the Tory leadership contest, via #midjourneyv5 Image
It doesn't work well all the time, especially with less well-known individuals, like in this image of Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump having a fight. This was the best Tucker it could generate. Image
Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry fighting in the Bake Off tent is also not so convincing, but still good. Image
Tom Cruise vs Harry Hill gives a good impression of Midjourney's fame gap. ImageImage
You can combine two famous people effectively, here's Tom Cruise as Donald Trump in the role of a lifetime. Image
It's not just people #midjourneyv5 can fake, imagine if pictures like this were spread across Ukrainian and Russian Telegram channels in a coordinated campaign claiming a nuclear weapon had been used in Ukraine ImageImageImageImage
Keep in mind these examples were mostly all my first attempts at these images, so someone who actually spent time on this could select the most convincing, flaw free images. Anyway, here's some non-existent kittens to make you feel better. Image
Just as a final, final note, here's how I describe the issues with handling this sort of thing in terms of evidence vs information:
vice.com/en/article/3ak… ImageImage

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More from @EliotHiggins

Nov 4, 2024
It's been brought to my attention that there's videos published on social media claiming I've made various statements about the US election, related to election integrity. These are part of a Russian disinformation campaign, and the quotes are fabricated, but it's nice to know the Russians hold the value of my opinions in such high regard.
I've previously discussed other videos in this campaign in the below thread:
More details of the campaign can be found in this thread
Read 10 tweets
Oct 22, 2024
🧵 1/7: The European Court of Human Rights has ruled in favor of Russian NGOs and media groups (including @Bellingcat), declaring Russia's "foreign agent" legislation a violation of fundamental human rights. The court found that the law imposes undue restrictions on freedom of expression & association.
2/7: The law requires NGOs & individuals receiving foreign funds to register as “foreign agents,” facing stigma, harsh reporting requirements, and severe penalties. This label implies foreign control—without proof—and misleads the public
3/7: The Court noted that the "foreign agent" label, linked to spies & traitors, damages the reputation of those designated and leads to a chilling effect on civil society and public discourse.
Read 9 tweets
Oct 15, 2024
It's currently 9:11am, this post has 3 views, and no retweets or likes on an account with 75 followers. Let's see how long it takes for it to get several hundred retweets, and a few tens of thousands of views. Image
In the last 15 minutes, that tweet just gained 15.7k views, 187 likes, with no retweets. Two other tweets with similarly fake stores, posted around the same time, with similar profiles, have also suddenly gain a couple of hundred likes and around the same amount of views. This is, in real time, how a Russian disinformation campaign is using Twitter to promote its fake stories.Image
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The thing is, nearly all of this engagement, apart from about 10 views and none of the likes, are entirely inauthentic. This doesn't help them reach genuine audiences, it's just boosting their stats so when they report back to their paymasters they can tell them how many views, likes and retweets they got, but they're all fake. It's effectively the people running these campaigns scamming their paymasters to make them think it's working, when it's not at all.
Read 4 tweets
Sep 25, 2024
A new fake Bellingcat story, from a fake video claiming to be from Fox News. What's interesting about this one is I viewed the tweet 10 minutes ago, and it had 5 views, and suddenly it jumped to 12.5k, then 16.2k views in less than 5 minutes, with zero retweets or likes. Image
To me this suggests there's a bot network being used to boost views of tweets used in this disinformation campaign.
In 90 seconds this tweet just gained 154 retweets, another sign of bot activity. Image
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Read 22 tweets
Sep 10, 2024
It's clear this is a coordinated attack from pro-Orban media which they really don't want being noticed outside of Hungary, but what they don't seem to realise is I'm now going to use what they did at every presentation I do on disinformation to audiences across the world.
What's notable is the accusations made against Bellingcat were all taken (uncredited) from an article publishing by MintPress claiming we've loads of intelligence agents working for us, which even the original MintPress article fails to prove.
Which to me just means I get to add a couple more slides to the presentation I'll be doing about this, to audiences made up of exactly the sort of people they didn't want to find out about this.
Read 5 tweets
Sep 5, 2024
State actors see alternative media ecosystems as a vehicle for promoting their agendas, and take advantage of that by not just covertly funding them, but also giving them access to their officials and platforming them at places like the UN.
A recent example of that is Jackson Hinkle going to Eastern Ukraine, then getting invited to the UN by Russia to speak at a press conference, and that footage being used by state media as evidence of "experts" rejecting the "mainstream narratives" on Ukraine.
A lack of transparency around the funding of the individuals and websites that are part of these alternative media ecosystems allows for state actors to get away with their covert influence, a clear example of which we've seen over the last 24 hours.
Read 5 tweets

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