Meet Ukraine's New AI Spokeswoman for Foreign Ministry

0:01The Ukraine has created a new AI generated foreign ministry spokesperson. This is such a fascinating and interesting on so many levels development, in my opinion. Essentially, what they're doing is they said that they're doing this to alleviate the time and energy that some sort of diplomat would have to do to be this person. instead. Now their new foreign minister person is AI. My opinion on this is going to vary on a bunch of different things. I'm sure I'll make people mad, whatever I say about this. So if that's you, I don't know, find a new episode, but here's, here's my opinion. Number one, this is not great news.

0:44I feel like from an optics perspective, um, this is kind of like, I don't want to listen to an AI person really. If I know it's an AI person, like that's my opinion. And so it's like if all of a sudden I'm going and like listening to like some head of like foreign ministry and they're like telling me updates and it's an AI, I just immediately think I lose trust. Now, do people lie or say things that are untrue? A hundred percent. Like look at the American press secretary. You could say either under Biden or under Trump, whoever you don't like, right? Like you could say that they're telling falsehoods as well.

1:18So it's like, I don't know, maybe that's like a good argument here. but like it definitely from an optics perspective having like an ai do this you just feel like you could have like a small group of people who turn all of the cabinet in their government into these ais and then they can control them and it makes it look like there's a bunch of people like it just come on it doesn't seem that great you also like yeah intrinsically don't trust it if it's like a clone of somebody so for example i recently uh on x there was this viral clip where they used Tejen, which is like a video cloner, to take a video of the president of, I think, Argentina, Mille, and they like cloned, they like, whatever, they essentially like cloned his voice and they played it in English because he obviously only speaks like Portuguese, right?

2:02Or Spanish, I'm pretty sure Portuguese. So they do it in English and now you're listening to like, you watch the video of him talking, but you can hear English in his own actual voice. the clone his voice to me that's cool and even if they made a clone of him like talking and did the same thing it'd be kind of like whatever it's actually him i actually am like i have no problems whatsoever when they do the the ai voice because to me that seems like obviously he doesn't speak english and i want to hear in his own voice i don't want to hear it dubbed by like there's nothing worse than like listening to like a foreign leader talking like the president of china and then it's like dubbed over by like a woman's voice and it's just like your brain like you're like come on like At least pick someone that sort of sounds like him.

2:42I need to whatever. So I think there's a real problem these AIs can solve. I don't think the solution is to completely fabricate a new person. Because they're like, well, it's going to save time and energy of an actual diplomat. But it's like, what else is the point of your diplomats? And also, you can pick one diplomat in your whole country. You can pick one person that it's their job to be the spokesperson. person and you could use AI to clone their voice and have it in every language if that's your issue. Cool. But like, I want to see a real person. To me, it seems, I don't know, it just seems sketchy and weird to have it like 100 % be an AI person.

3:18So that's my opinion on it. The ministry released a statement on it and they said that this is for the first time in history, they're going to use a digital spokesperson to read their statements, which they said are still going to be written by humans. So I don't know why you wouldn't still have it read by a human. Anyways, their spokesperson, her name is Victoria Shee. And she is dressed in a dark suit. And yeah, it's going to be interesting. So right now, it's just like a talking head. So she's like sitting there, she's moving her hands. She holds press services. And it's, you know, going to be really interesting.

3:56They're saying like, don't worry, everything we give her is going to be written and verified by real people. It's just the visual element that is going to be kind of this AI generated thing. So Ukraine's foreign ministry, foreign minister, Dmitry Kueblo said in a, said that this new spokeswoman or whatever is, was a quote, technological leap that no diplomatic service in the world has yet made. Again, like, I don't want to just like beg on them all day, but like, no, no one in the world has made before, like, maybe there's a reason. Like, I don't know if you want to be like in government, I don't, sometimes it's just to be the first person to ever do something.

4:35Maybe there's a handful of governments like, oh yeah, we're all kind of like doing this thing. And it's like, oh yeah, cool. But it's like, we're the first ones. It's, I don't know. Sometimes it's like, you're either really innovative or you're like not good. That's just kind of the feeling you get from it. So anyways, there's that. And, uh, I think one of the main reasons that they said they're going to do this was quote, saving time and resources. Um, they said that she's creator or creators are a team called the game changers who also made some virtual reality content related to the war in ukraine um they said that uh the spokesperson is based on the word victory and that ukrainian officials um or a ukrainian artificial intelligence word so anyways right now all of her appearance are modified on a and like their voice is like modified on a real person who is rosalie nombray who's a singer and former contestant on ukraine's version of the bachelor so it's like they got this like celebrity from like ukraine's bachelor and now she's like the the model for this and they turn her into their their international spokesperson they like clone an ai on her i don't know man it's just not my thing i just you know it would be like you know it'd be like if you had um katie perry is like america's spokesperson but we created like a ai clone of katie perry like i don't know man it just really wouldn't be my thing i it doesn't feel very professional but that's just me right so you know i'll curb my criticism on all of this um this is something that's interesting nombre was actually born in the now Russian controlled city of Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine.

6:17For some reason, they all want to say that she's got 54 ,000 followers on Instagram. I don't know what this has anything to do. I think she used to, I guess the thing that's interesting is she discussed stereotypes about, quoting here from a Barron's article, mixed race Ukrainians and those who grew up as Russian speakers. I don't know a lot. I didn't know that Russians and Ukrainians were different races. I guess I don't know a lot on this issue. And anyways, I'll move on. That's a quote from the Barron's article on this. Essentially what they've said though is that she and Nombre quote are two different people and that only the AI figure gives official statements.

7:02Here's another issue that they're going to run into. When you clone someone, right, like Nombre, who's like kind of a local celebrity. And now all of a sudden she's like your government spokesperson. She has her own, she's a, she's an actual person that's going to make her own statements on Instagram. They're like, they're two separate people, but people are going to like start to like, assume they're the same person. If you have a good realistic AI clone of like a famous person. So like, let's say the Katy Perry thing, if all of a sudden Katy Perry is like the U S government spokesperson, which I don't know why she'd ever sell her likeness to be used for that because that seems ridiculous.

7:32Cause they can make her say whatever they want. And then like, let's say the U S government is like from Katy Perry's AI is like, we want to go to war with Iran. This is going to be awesome. And then Katy Perry's like, I don't want us to go to war with Iran. This is going to be terrible. It just seems like an optics nightmare, like an absolute optics nightmare. So again, one, one more point on why this is probably a bad idea and why they're the first people to do it. Maybe there's a reason in any case, this, there's a ton of controversy around all of this. There's AI being used in all sorts of aspects of this war.

8:02Obviously it's a tragedy, what's happening in the Ukraine and all that. And there's controversies about what's going on within Russia's side of the story and like all the, all this stuff. Like I'm not going into the geopolitics of the whole war. I'm talking about the AI use case and I'm not necessarily criticizing Ukraine specifically either. If this was any government, if this was Russia doing it, I'd say this is a bad optics issue. If this is a U S government, I'd say this is a bad optics issue. So it's a very interesting, um, how this is all playing out, but yeah, we'll, uh, we'll keep you updated on if this is a project that gets continued or if my opinion, if this thing gets canceled probably after not too long, but you know, maybe that's just me.

8:36In any case, if you enjoyed the episode today, make sure to subscribe, like the video. If you enjoyed what we talked about, or if you learned something new, make sure to leave us a review and I hope that you all have an amazing rest of your day.