CBS News
Can you spot the AI impostor? The swift rise of AI celebrity endorsements
Two months before Election Day, a photo of singer Elton John in a pink coat with the letters “MAGA” on it surfaced on social media, suggesting the global superstar had endorsed former President Donald Trump.
But the photo wasn’t real. It’s the latest in a series of images and videos created using artificial intelligence that aim to dupe viewers into thinking their favorite celebrities have endorsed political candidates.
Stars including Will Smith and Taylor Swift have also had their likeness used to falsely claim they are supporting Trump in the upcoming presidential election.
When Swift publicly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in an Instagram post, she referenced AI-generated images that falsely suggested she had endorsed Trump, adding that the incident “brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.”
An AI-generated video of Will Smith and Chris Rock, which amassed over 700,000 views on X, showed the stars eating large plates full of spaghetti with Trump.
How to identify AI-generated images
There are three main ways to tell if an image or video has been AI-generated or manipulated, Claire Leibowicz, head of the AI and Media Integrity Program at the nonprofit technology coalition The Partnership on AI, told CBS News.
The first way is to look for airbrushing, smudging or “things that defy the laws of physics,” Leibowicz said.
The second is to find any visual inconsistencies. In the case of the Elton John image, for example, the MAGA letters on his jacket were sewn across the lapels and his glasses were too close together.
The third way to find out if an image is real is to find the original source through reverse searching online. This can be done by taking a screenshot and uploading it to Google Lens or similar tools, and the results will show whether there’s a match out there, helping you verify where it came from.
Leibowicz added that she was previously fooled by AI when a fabricated image of Pope Francis went viral online.
“This is getting harder, and we’re [going to] need journalists and other experts to really be helping us authenticate content.”
A poll conducted by the Polarization Research Lab in March found that nearly 50% of Americans believe AI will make elections worse, about 30% are unsure and 20% believe AI will improve the election process.
Sam Gregory, executive director of Witness.org, a global nonprofit that uses video and technology to protect human rights, told CBS News, “Most of the information that will mislead us around the elections is likely to be powerful leaders telling lies or misrepresenting the truth in public.”
The Department of Homeland Security released a bulletin in May warning the public of the challenges AI can create for the November presidential election, saying the “timing of election-specific AI-generated media can be just as critical as the content itself, as it may take time to counter-message or debunk the false content permeating online.”
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CBS News
McDonald’s investing $100 million to lure customers back to the fast food giant after E. coli outbreak
McDonald’s is investing $100 million to bring customers back to stores after an outbreak of E. coli food poisoning tied to onions on the fast-food giant’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers.
The investments include $65 million that will go directly to the hardest-hit franchises, the company said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that slivered onions on the Quarter Pounders were the likely source of the E. coli. Taylor Farms in California recalled onions potentially linked to the outbreak.
The E. coli outbreak has sickened 104 people in 14 states, federal health officials said in an update on Wednesday.
At least 34 people have been hospitalized, and four developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a serious condition that can cause kidney failure. An 88-year-old man who resided in Grand Junction, Colorado, died, as previously reported. The illnesses began at the end of September, and the most recent onset of illness occurred as of Oct. 21, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The Food and Drug Administration has said that “there does not appear to be a continued food safety concern related to this outbreak at McDonald’s restaurants.”
However, the outbreak hurt the company’s sales.
Quarter Pounders were removed from menus in several states in the early days of the outbreak.
In a statement Wednesday obtained by CBS News, McDonald’s said it had found an “alternate supplier” for the approximately 900 restaurants that had temporarily stopped serving Quarter Pounders with slivered onions.
“Over the past week, these restaurants resumed the sale of Quarter Pounder burgers with slivered onions,” McDonald’s said.
CBS News reached out to McDonald’s on Saturday for a statement regarding the reported investment.
Health officials said Saturday they have confirmed the first U.S. case of a new form of mpox that was first seen in eastern Congo.
The person had traveled to eastern Africa and was treated in Northern California upon return, according to the California Department of Public Health. Symptoms are improving and the risk to the public is low.
Mpox is a rare disease caused by infection with a virus that’s in the same family as the one that causes smallpox. It is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals.
Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of mpox in Africa that was spread through close contact including through sex.
More than 3,100 confirmed cases have been reported just since late September, according to the World Health Organization. The vast majority of them have been in three African countries – Burundi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Since then, cases of travelers with the new mpox form have been reported in Germany, India, Kenya, Sweden, Thailand, Zimbabwe, and the United Kingdom.
Health officials earlier this month said the situation in Congo appears to be stabilizing. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated Congo needs at least 3 million mpox vaccines to stop the spread, and another 7 million vaccines for the rest of Africa.
The current outbreak is different from the 2022 global outbreak of mpox where gay and bisexual men made up the vast majority of cases.
