Deepfakes Attempt to Change the Course of War – Learn English with the News

As artificial intelligence technology improves, it becomes easier to create fake videos featuring movie stars, politicians and even your neighbors. This technology can be used for any number of purposes, not least of all influencing or trying to turn the tide of war.

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The news is a consistent source of entertainment, knowledge and discovery that never ceases to exist and always comes out with more and more material each day. Because it plays such a vital part in our lives and is so important to keep up with, it is without a doubt a piece of your everyday routine that can’t go ignored.

Whether it is to understand the ramifications of recent legislation passed, to hear about recent events and grasp the potential consequences to your country, or simply hear about what is happening in other countries in order to compare them to what’s happening in yours, the news is certainly a staple in our lives and the most consistent way to get information.

This is why Scrambled Eggs has decided to unite two of your biggest worlds: learning English and keeping up with what is happening in the world. We hope our challenging daily exercises, composed of listening, vocabulary and comprehension exercises in English, will satisfy both of those above worlds in a satisfactory and also entertaining way.

So enough about introductions, let’s get to today’s Learn English with the News topic:

Adapted from this article 

And that’s it for today’s English lesson, where you can improve your English with the news and current events. Do you have any comments or special requests for us for the next edition of Learn English with the News? Be sure to leave any feedback you have in the comments section below, as we would love to help you on your quest to learn the English language!

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Full text:

In the third week of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky appeared in a video, speaking slowly and deliberately while standing behind a white presidential podium featuring his country’s coat of arms. Except for his head, the Ukrainian president’s body barely moved as he spoke. His voice sounded distorted and almost gravelly as he appeared to tell Ukrainians to surrender to Russia.

“I ask you to lay down your weapons and go back to your families,” he appeared to say in Ukrainian in the clip. It was quickly identified as a deepfake. “This war is not worth dying for. I suggest you to keep on living, and I am going to do the same.”

Five years ago, nobody had even heard of deepfakes, the persuasive-looking but false video and audio files made with the help of artificial intelligence. Now, they’re being used to alter the course of a war. In addition to the fake Zelesnky video, there was another widely circulated deepfake video depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin supposedly declaring peace in the Ukraine war.

In general, deepfakes have improved immensely in a relatively short period of time. As they become increasingly common, deepfake videos make it harder to tell fact from fiction online, and all the more so during a war that is unfolding online and rife with misinformation. Even a bad deepfake risks muddying the waters further.

“Once this line is eroded, truth itself will not exist,” said a research associate professor at the University of Southern California. “If you see anything and you cannot believe it anymore, then everything becomes false… It’s just that we will lose confidence in anything and everything.”