Ukraine's Foreign Ministry Welcomes AI-Generated Spokeswoman
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The 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 ministry person is AI-generated.

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 my opinion. Number one, this is not great news. I feel like from an optics perspective, 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. So it's like, I don't know, maybe, 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 on X, there was this viral clip where they used HeyGen, which is like a video cloner.

um to take a video of uh the president of i think um argentina mile 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 um or 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 they 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 like i need to like you know whatever

So I think like 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 like an actual, you know, diplomat. But it's like, what else is the point of your diplomats? And also you could pick one diplomat in your whole country. You could pick one person that it's their job to be the spokesperson 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. It, to me, it seems, I don't know, it just seems sketchy and weird to have it like a hundred percent be an AI person. So that's my opinion on it. Um, 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, um, 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. Um, anyways, their spokesperson, her name is Victoria. She, um, and she is dressed in a dark suit and, uh, yeah, it's, 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. Um,

She holds press services. And it's, you know, going to be really interesting. They'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 minister, Dmytro Kuebo, said that this new spokeswoman or whatever 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 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 maybe 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. 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. They said that the spokesperson is based on the word victory and that Ukrainian officials are...

Ukrainian artificial intelligence word. So anyways, right now, all of her appearance are modified on a and like their voices like modified on a real person who is Rosalie Nombre, 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 model for this. And they turn her into 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... Katy Perry is like America's spokesperson, but we created like an AI clone of Katy Perry. Like...

I don't know, man. It just really wouldn't be my thing. It doesn't feel very professional, but that's just me, right? So, you know, I'll curb my criticism on all of this. This is something that's interesting. Nombre was actually born in the now Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. For 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 with.

I think she used to, like, I guess the thing that's interesting is, like, 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. Okay.

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. Here'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 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 because 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 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, there's a ton of controversy around all of this. There's AI being used in all sorts of aspects of this war. Obviously, it's a tragedy what's happening in the Ukraine and all of that. And there's controversies about what's going on with the Russia side of the story and all this stuff. 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 initiative.

If this was Russia doing it, I'd say this is a bad optics issue. If this is the US government, I'd say this is a bad optics issue. So it's very interesting how this is all playing out. But yeah, we'll keep you updated on if this is a project that gets continued or if, my opinion, this thing gets canceled probably after not too long. But, you know, maybe that's just me. In 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.