White House pushes back on ‘cheap fake’ Biden videos

White House officials are reacting aggressively to a wave of “cheap and fake” videos that allegedly show President Biden confused or meandering and that question his physical and mental fitness ahead of the election.

The rise of videos, which do not use artificial intelligence (AI) but are cropped or edited in a deceptive way, marks the latest example of how technology can be used deceptively during the 2024 campaign.

The use of “cheap fakes” has gained national attention in recent days thanks to a trio of clips involving Biden that quickly went viral and painted him as confused or unaware of his surroundings.

One viral clip, which was first shared by a Republican National Committee (RNC) account, depicts Biden struggling to sit at a D-Day ceremony in a chair that critics claimed did not exist. But the clip cuts off before Biden takes her place.

Another video came from Biden’s recent trip to Italy for the Group of Seven (G7) meeting, when he and other world leaders watched a skydiving demonstration. A cropped version Part of the video appeared to show Biden walking away before the Italian prime minister pushed him back into the group.

But the wider angle makes it clear that Biden was pointing at a skydiver who had just landed. The New York Post made the incident the centerpiece of its front page the next day, with the headline “Meander in Chief.”

Right-wing media also released a clip from a fundraiser on Saturday, claiming that Biden froze on stage and had to be carried away by former President Obama. Biden and Obama advisors contested this characterization.

The video shows Obama and Biden saying goodbye to the crowd at the end of the event. After a few moments, Obama grabs Biden by the hand and pats him on the back before they walk away. In response to a New York Post headline claiming that Biden froze and had to be led off stage by Obama, an Obama adviser he responded“This did not happened.”

Former President Trump highlighted the videos during a campaign rally Tuesday in Racine, Wisconsin, and mocked the White House’s response.

“Crooked Joe and his handlers are insisting that he is more cunning than ever and say that Crooked Joe’s videos are ‘clean fakes,’” Trump said. “They say they were edited in a misleading way. All the mistakes he’s made… he can’t go anywhere without making a mistake.”

While “cheap fakes” are less convincing than sophisticated AI deepfakes, they still pose a danger — especially by undermining trust among voters, said Paul Barrett, deputy director and senior fellow at the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University.

“What they do is further erode the distinction between what is true and what is not, and I think they provide fuel that fuels highly polarized partisan attitudes that already exist,” Barrett said.

While the videos may not convince many Democrats to change their vote, over time the altered videos could reinforce and provide “artificial fuel” to a false narrative about Biden, he said.

“Advances in digital technology are having the side effects of blurring the line between truth and falsehood and amplifying cynicism on the part of many people about whether it is even possible to tell whether things are true or false,” Barrett said. .

Polls have consistently shown that voters are concerned about Biden’s age and cognitive abilities as he seeks a second term. Biden is 81 years old and would be 86 at the end of a second term. Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, is 78 years old and would be 82 at the end of his potential second term.

A CBS News/YouGov poll conducted this month found that 50% of voters said Trump has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, compared with 35% who said the same about Biden.

The videos, which are frequently shared by conservative and critical accounts of Biden, feed the narrative that he is a weak man and prone to states of confusion.

White House officials reacted aggressively to the latest round of misleading videos, criticizing the New York Post for its role in releasing the clips.

Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates has posted more than two dozen times on social platform X since Monday about the videos, sharing fact checks and criticizing the Post and other media outlets for releasing the videos without context.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the videos “bad faith” efforts by Republicans to discredit the president.

“I think that says everything we need to know about how desperate the Republicans are here,” Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday. “And instead of talking about the president’s performance in office — and what I mean by that is his legislative victories, what he was able to do for the American people across the country — we’re seeing these… doctored videos. And this is, again, done in bad faith.”

The recently altered video clips do not use newer, more sophisticated technologies used in realistic AI-generated deepfakes.

However, the rise of AI-generated deepfakes, like the one that imitated Biden’s voice and discouraged voters from voting in New Hampshire’s January primary, it could be encouraging people to use altered video content as a strategy more regularly, said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of the advocacy group Public Citizen.

“While this isn’t actually new and is just widely circulating misinformation, some of the ugliness and frequency is exacerbated by the prevalence of deepfake technology,” Gilbert added.

The White House’s resistance to “cheap and fake” videos comes after months in which Democrats warned about the dangers of AI-generated election content, but so far the administration has not implemented new rules.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has been considering a rules clarification to address AI in campaign content for nearly a year, and a Senate panel introduced three AI-related election bills in May, but no new protections have been outlined before of election day.

“I think the real danger of AI in this regard is its potential use in the October surprise context, where in the last minute before an election, you get a very convincing-looking fake video that puts a politician in a false and demeaning, and it is difficult, even for a short period of time, 12 hours, 24 hours or 36 hours, to unmask it,” Barrett said.

“And that could really change people’s minds from ‘I’m going to vote’ or ‘I’m not going to vote,’” he added.