“I don’t want anyone to think that I have said such bad things in my life. Using a Ukrainian girl to promote Russia is the height of insanity.”
Olga Loik has seen her face in many videos running on Chinese social media. This is because of the artificial intelligence tools easily available in the online world.
Olga, a student of the University of Pennsylvania, says, “I saw my face and heard my voice, but all this was very scary, because I heard myself saying such things that I had never said.”
These social media accounts with her face are being run under dozens of different names. For example, Sophia, Natasha, April and Stashi.
These ‘girls’ were speaking the Chinese language Mandarin. Whereas Olga never learned this language. Obviously, it seems that all these girls were from Russia and they were talking about the friendship between China and Russia or advertising Russian products.
Olga says, “I noticed that almost 90 percent of the videos with my face were talking about China and Russia. It was being said about the friendship between China and Russia that both our countries are very good friends and food items were also being advertised in them.”
Among all the social media accounts being run using Olga’s face, the biggest was ‘Natasha Imported Food’.
It has more than three lakh followers. ‘Natasha’ used to say such things in her videos, for example, ‘Russia is the best country. It is very sad that other countries are turning their backs on Russia and Russian women want to come to China.’ After this, she started promoting Russian sweets.
Olga got very angry after watching all these videos. Her family is still living in Ukraine.
But Olga’s case has drawn the world’s attention to the dangers of artificial intelligence, which is developing so fast that creating rules around it and protecting people has become a real challenge.
Olga’s Chinese-speaking lookalikes started appearing in 2023 when she started her own YouTube channel, which she does not update regularly.
About a month later, Olga started receiving messages from people claiming to have seen Olga speaking Chinese on Chinese social media platforms.
Olga was quite surprised by this. She herself started looking for such videos. She saw her lookalike created by artificial intelligence on Xiaohongshu.
Xiaohongshu is a Chinese social media platform similar to Instagram. Apart from this, Olga also found videos with her face on Bili-Bili, a video website similar to YouTube.
Olga found about 35 social media accounts created using her face. She says, “There were many such accounts. Some even had the flag of Russia in their bio.”
When Olga’s fiancé tweeted about these accounts, a company called He-Jen responded. He-Jen has developed an artificial intelligence tool that can create lookalikes.
A spokesperson for the company told the BBC that their systems had been hacked and used to create “unauthorized content.”
The spokesperson also said that they had immediately improved their security and updated verification protocols so that their platform could not be misused in the future.
But Angela Zhang of the University of Hong Kong says that what happened to Olga is “very common in China.”
Angela says, “A huge economy of counterfeiting, misuse of personal data and creation of deepfakes is secretly flourishing in China.”
China is one of the first countries in the world to try to make rules and regulations for artificial intelligence to determine what it can be used for. China has even amended its civil code to protect the right to imitate someone through digital manipulation.
In 2023, data from the Public Security Department revealed that authorities had arrested 515 people for ‘mimicking faces with artificial intelligence’. Such cases are also going on in Chinese courts.
What was the reason behind making the videos?
One reason for this could be that the friendship between China and Russia was being promoted in them.
China and Russia have come very close to each other in recent years. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin have described the friendship between the two countries as ‘unlimited’. The two leaders are scheduled to meet again in Beijing this week.
China’s state media propagates things that justify Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Russia’s side is presented. Discussions about this war on social media are censored.
Amy Hein, a law and technology researcher at the University of Bologna and KU Leuven, says, “It is not clear whether these accounts were being run in coordination with each other for a collective purpose. But, it is definitely profitable for them to propagate things that match the government’s propaganda.”
But this also means that the risk for ordinary people like Olga increases and experts warn that they can also be charged with violating Chinese laws.
Kayla Blomqvist, a technology and geopolitics researcher at Oxford University, warns, “There is a risk that politically sensitive content created by artificial intelligence could put certain people in trouble.”
She says, “They can then be punished quickly without following due process of law.”
Kayla also says that China’s emphasis on artificial intelligence and online privacy is more on protecting the rights of consumers than on exploitative private characters. But she also stresses that, ‘From the government’s perspective, the rights of ordinary citizens are very weak.’
Amy Hine explains this in this way, “China’s basic objective in formulating rules for artificial intelligence is to strike a balance between promoting invention and economic development while maintaining social stability.”
Amy says, “The laws seem very strict on the books. But, there is enough evidence that these laws are implemented selectively. Especially in the case of rules related to the license of generative AI. Whose aim is probably to create a more favorable environment for invention and the basic thinking behind this is probably that if needed, the right to take action under the law is available.”
The impact of Olga’s case also seems to be going beyond the borders of China.
This highlights the difficulties in growing an industry that seems to be growing at a breakneck pace, and which the lawmakers are chasing. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t trying.
In March this year, the European Parliament approved the AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive legal framework to reduce the risks of this technology.
Not only this, in October last year, US President Joe Biden issued an executive order making it mandatory for developers of artificial intelligence to share their data with the government.
Although the process of making rules at the national and international level is going on slowly compared to the progress of artificial intelligence. But, says Kayela, “We have to make our understanding more clear about its most dangerous dangers and also have to build a consensus on how we reduce its dangers.” In the meantime, there is probably no concrete step people can take at an individual level other than not posting such content online.
Amy Hine says, “The only thing we can do is not give such content to those people which they can misuse. We should not upload our photos, videos or audio publicly on social media.”
She says, “However, wrongdoers will always find some reason to copy others and even if governments take action, the process of breaking the wall of rules is going to continue.”
Olga is sure that she is not the last victim of generative AI. But, she is determined that no one can keep her away from the internet because of this.
She has shared her experience on her YouTube channel and says that some online users in China are also helping Olga by commenting on videos of her lookalike, calling her a fake.
Olga said that many of those videos have now been removed.
She says, “I want to share my story with everyone. I want to make sure that people understand that it is not necessary that everything you are seeing online is true.”
Olga says, “I love sharing my thoughts with the world and none of these fraudsters can stop me from doing so.”
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