...our republican opponent here on this stage has voted for donald trump twice. mr. garvey, you voted for him twice... as your own man, what is your decision? garvey is wrong for california. but garvey's surging in the polls. fox news says garvey would be a boost to republican control of the senate. stop garvey. adam schiff for senate. i'm adam schiff, and i approve this message. a new version of the ai mid journey is so good a professional photographer worries nobody needs him anymore. public citizens lisa gilbert has worries of her own about the upcoming election and herb wagner about the new book about twitter. that's this week on "press: here".

good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. the swedish company klarna said its ai-powered help center does the work of 700 human beings, people who work in customer service, translator, as well, even doctors are all thinking about how artificial intelligence is going to affect their jobs and now photographers. i was reading an article the other day that pointed out if ai can make pictures like this and have no misunderstanding, this was made by ai and these people are not real then we'll need a lot fewer photographers for industries like advertising and publishing. if you need a picture about a magazine article for remote work, you can hire a model, borrow a laptop, rent out a coffee shop or use ai picture of a woman working in a coffee shop and the woman, the cup, the laptop, none of it actually

exists. tyler smith wrote that article that caught my eye and was kind enough to talk about the challenge ahead for photographers. good morning, thomas. you work with photography and artificial intelligence and you write about both. >> yeah. absolutely. i'm a professional photographer and i've been in the photographic space for ten years and i run a photo agency in the bay area called gato images and i work for the telegraph where we cover bay area tack and culture and share photos of the area and my other background that sort of bled into this is i hold a degree in cognitive science and artificial intelligence from the johns hopkins university so i've been in the ai space for a long while, and i love to combine the interests in ai and photography. >> i can't imagine anyone of an expert than anyone with an ai

background and is a photographer on the subject and for those who have seen an ai photograph on television and don't know how it works behind, explain to folks how easy it is. i will admit the journey could be wonky, but like dolly, you're just typing in the thing you want and it comes out like magic. >> absolutely. you're basically given what's calleded a prompt which is a description of the image that you want and based on that and usually about five seconds to a minute depending on the software, you'll get somewhere between one and four images created completely out of nowhere by the software matching whatever your prompt is and that can be literally anything. the original prompts that were used to test some of these systems were as silly as an avocado-shaped armchair. that's a very classic one that's still used today to test new systems and you know, as usable and practical as images of a lawyer doing legal research, for example. >> well, and then these would be

normally, if i were doing a story about how to update your will or something for a publication, we as a publication might reach out to stock photos or even send a photographer to shoot some pictures, we need some art, right? so you get this lawyer who is going to be in a law office and either you're hiring the model and the photographer or you're going through stock photos, now even the author of the piece can just create the picture. >> exactly. yes. so if you imagine, if i'm a stock photographer and i want to take that photo of that lawyer doing legal research, i've got to rent a law library or create one for pretend in the studio and props and the law books in the shelf and wardrobe and the makeup department and lighting, and i'm going to need to have the expertise as a photographer and the equipment to actually take that photo, plus the relationships with the stock media agencies to actually license it. there's a lot that goes into that and you can imagine that if

you can just as an author of a piece type in a description and in a few seconds get that at this point is almost comparable to what they can create and that changes the landscape for photographers and that's a key point, thomas, that these aren't always perfect, but in most cases they're good enough. >> yeah. so one of the things i exploreded in my article that up until 2023 there were limitations about how usable these images were and the classic example is you might get a photo of a person and maybe they have four fingers and it otherwise looks great and their hands don't look right or there's something about the size of their eyes that doesn't quite match or something and that really always held these images back and i give an example in my article asks for that image of a lawyer and it created kind of something like an anime

character that looked like they were at hogwarts or something and it looked overly dramatic and cartoony and this was as of the end of next year, now with the new technologies that have come out in the beginning of 2024 like mid-journey version six is one of the advanced platforms out there and the images are so realistic that they're not only usable at this point, but i think in some cases better than the equivalent that a photographer would shoot in the real world. >> i want to remind the viewers they're looking at some of the examples that we're going to put on the screen for them that all of these things were created by ai and that's why we put the words in the corner of the screen saying generated by art icial intelligence and that's going to be an interesting development, too, isn't it? that while stock photos which again, if the person in an

article about, you know, coming medicines is really a doctor or not, it's less important, but in news where you need to be absolutely authentic, we'll be careful when a viewer understands it's ai and it makes real pictures in a weird way, more valuable. >> exactly. as a photographer, i think these are amazing technologies. i can understand how for a part of the industry that's going to be a big challenge and that's going to be a lot of disruption, and i remain positive about the future of photography and that's because as you mentioned as the world is awash in these ai images and the images that are verified to be real, that are trustworthy and that show the real world suddenly become a lot more valued. for some uses, maybe if i'm making a brochure and wills and the states that ai image might work, but if i'm doing a news

article about current events and what happened in the local community not going to use an ai image for that and they'll want to see that and the real thing. so i think there's actually more value for those verified, trustworthy and accurate images of the real world and that's really for my own agency where i'm encouraging photographers to pivot and lean into what are the things that you can do as a person out there in the world that the machine is not going to be able to do and how can you show your end user and your client, hey, this is a real image, this is not something that was created by a machine. >> news photographers probably say for them, wedding photographers say it because nobody wants an ai picture of their husband or their new wife. >> absolutely. event photographers are probably the safest. there are threats coming down the line through their livelihood and now you can take a photo on your iphone and use ai and make it look like it was shot on a professional photo or

professional camera, rather. i think the reality, though is that actually doing event photography requires so much more than just taking pictures. it's the knowledge of what you should capture, it's the ability to work with people who are in a very stressful situation and a very important day. it's having the right equipment and having that knowledge base and personality to do that. so i think those photographers will be safe for quite a while. >> it's a fascinating future. thomas smith, thank you ever so much for joining us. i really thought your article was fascinating and i appreciate you bringing in more information about it. thomas smith, professional photographer and "press: here" will be back in just a moment.

what do i see in peter dixon? i see my husband... the father of our girls. i see a public servant. a man who served under secretary clinton in the state department... where he took on the epidemic of violence against women in the congo. i see a fighter, a tenacious problem-solver... who will go to congress and protect abortion rights and our democracy. because he sees a better future for all of us. i'm peter dixon and i approved this message.

welcome back to "press: here." a group of silicon valley companies said they would team up to fight ai fakes in the upcoming election. 20 of them from adobe to microsoft to tiktok all onboard to combat deceptive use of ai in the 2024 elections. lisa gilbert is from public citizen and i asked her to walk us through what this means. good morning, i saw what fake posts did in 2016 and again in 2020. it's easy to imagine 2024 could be a lot worse. >> first, thanks so much for having me, and i couldn't agree more. i think as we look ahead to 2024, one of the biggest threats to our democracy is the proliferation of generative ai

and what it means for misinformation flooding the internet and catching misleading voters. so certainly, we were happy to see these tech companies taking the step. >> and what did they agree to? >> so it is a set of eight specific commitments that basically boils down to internally a set of checks where they will make sure that they're mitigating risks to deceptive ai and they're trying to keep it out of their platforms with the social media platform company and they're trying to provide transparency to regular people about how they're doing for all of that and trying to make sure there's increased public understanding and awareness of the threats of ai and what we might actually be seeing as it becomes more and more common. >> does it have any teeth? >> it's a great question. i would say not enough and part of the problem with voluntary commit ams they're voluntary and self-policed. these tech companies are

committing loudly to something that is very important. however, at the end of the day there's no outside enforcement mechanism and no way for us to really hold companies accountable for whether they're doing what they say they're going to do in support. >> the one thing that i think scares a lot of people most is this text to video. open ai a couple of video showed off text to video. somebody simply types in woman walking in tokyo, japan, in the rain and they get that video. this has been possible with stills for quite some time, but the amount of work that somebody has to do to create a fake video is very small these days. >> that's right. one of our critiques of our commitments is they're not making any commitment to keep new technologies that are risky away from the public and this, the one you mentioned is text going right to video is incredibly risky when it rolls out. it will take almost no expertise, as you say for anyone to create a misleading doing

something they never did and the entire political party saying something they never said and they could flub the internet very quickly and one of the things the companies would do is hold back technologies like these until there are guardrails in place to protect it. >> i think i find that fascinating and you are specifically saying hold off on text to video releasing into the public until after the election? >> that's right. i think one of the problems and one of the reasons we all are worried about generative ai is because of the arms race and putting out technology as soon as it's ready and not thinking through all of the ramifications. it is one of the reasons we're happy, but it is also the reason we're nervous about anything that could come out anyway and this is a prime example of text to video. >> and these sorts of fakes, maybe some small percentage of people believe that that really is joe biden with the swinging

the bottle of tequila around or whatever it happens to be, but it changes the news cycle, as well and the real messages even if most people say that's clearly fake and clearly ai and now let's change the news cycle and affected the election. >> that's right. it's a huge distraction and people will believe it. part of the problem is the folks creating these are savvy, some of them are, at least and the ones most obvious will be debunked and we need something more subtle and it could be biden falling down the stairs and doing something that plays into the narrative that he's not fit for the office, and i think that might be believed. no matter what it is, though, it shouldn't be out there and many to believe what they are learning about our candidates and truth is the hallmark of making democracy function. >> what role does the government play with this and what role does government play?

>> a big one. one of the things right now is part of the government and the state and the federal level doing everything they can including regulators to rein in what could be out of control and we've been excited to see the biden administration being taken seriously and they came out with an executive order and a number of regulatory agencies with how ai are being used by the federal government and we need legislation. we were excited to see bipartisan legislation with senator klobuchar to ban deep fakes in elections and that is something that would be incredible to see them passed into law. the last thing i'll say on this point is states are moving fairly rapidly and right now there are 32 bills that have been introduced around the country and moving. six have already passed and hopefully, i think it will be a patchwork and some will have the protections they need. >> keep up the great work.

i hope we get a good, honest election out of this and we have several months to go. lace gilbert is with public citizen. i appreciate you being with us this morning, and "press: here" will be right back. s and energy" that's the san francisco chronicle endorsing democrat katie porter for senate over all other options. porter is "easily the most impressive candidate." "known for her grilling of corporate executives." with "deep policy knowledge." katie porter's housing plan has "bipartisan-friendly ideas to bring homebuilding costs down." and the chronicle praises "her ideas to end soft corruption in politics." let's shake up the senate. with democrat katie porter. i'm katie porter and i approve this message.

>> welcome back to "press: here," there was no invention on the internet that i like more than twitter. it was a fire hose of information from trusted sources, verified reporters and organizations that gave me

up-to-the-minute news and then elon musk managed to sink it. it's a shell of what it used to be and of course, it's full of non-verified information from non-verified people. the battle over twitter and elon musk has been well documented. one book, elon musk by walter isaacson has lengthy, eyewitness accounts of musk's takeover, but my next guest says i can do better. kurt wagner is from bloomberg and his new book "battle for the bird" gives us a new perspective on the titanic downfall or the hindenburg downfall and right off the top let's agree to one thing and we're saying twitter. it's called x now and this is our tv show and we can call it what we want, we're calling it twitter. let's start with the name. i know he likes the letter x, and i know the history behind it and it causes all kinds of problems especially for us in the media because you describe

the x ceo, but you don't mean the former ceo. >> there is a bit an awkward situation there when you have one letter now suddenly representing this thing that as you point out has been in our vocabulary for 20 years almost at this point and is a worldwide known brand. so i think what elon was trying to do here was quite frankly, separate himself from the old twitter. even though he bought twitter and even though he loved twitter as a use are before he bought it and he grew to disdain and despise what the company was doing and the pivot to x was an effort by him to erase that past and start something fresh. >> and twitter's past sin aside, i feel like the world's richest man owning something like twitter, they add things or make decisions that affect us and we're want the world's richest men by a long shot.make decisio and we're want the world's richest men by a long shot.

they may not understand what we use twitter for. >> this is something that twitter employees learned quite quickly when elon showed up is he was looking at the product through the lens of his own personal use case. he has 100 million-plus followers and at the time he had 100 plus million. he was approaching the app saying how can i make this better for me or for my collection of friends who are also rich and have a huge following and that is not necessarily going to translate to the average twitter user and certainly not the brand-new twitter user and people who worked at the company were sort of disappointed that when he first came in were not necessarily better for the service as a whole. >> i mentioned off the top there's been a lot of documentation about the takeover of twitter. what makes yours different? >> i've been covering the company for ten years and there

is historical context and even things that you may think you know about for the twitter history and the fact that disney almost bought twitter in 2016. i go in deep for a lot of those things and offer new details, but i think the main difference here is i focus on two people and it's not just elon musk and it's also jack dorsey and the former ceo and the relationship between those guys because i think that is such a key why the deal got done and this focuses on the jack years and in the middle that you get the handoff and then to the elon part, but i think this historical context sets the stage for elon in a way most people haven't before. >> summarize that for me. what made that relationship? >> jack dorsey was infatuated with elon musk and he admired the things he was doing with spacex and tesla and so i think what i sort of realized through

the reporting was that jack saw elon as a kind of savior for twitter, right? he saw him as maybe the one person who could do what jack dorsey couldn't was to take twitter private and away from the pressures of being a publicly traded company. so had jack not had that sort of infatuation with elon and he spoke with him and texted with him privately and also encouraged the board to go along with this, right? so i think that personal relationship they had behind the scenes sort of made this thing happen. >> looking ahead, you know, musk famously cursed advertisers at that new york times event. can x ever recover? >> it's funny you ask that question and it's time for x to figure out a new business line, because i don't think that advertising alone is a viable business for them anymore and

i'm not saying it's going to be zero, but i think when i talk to advertisers the biggest issue they have is elon musk is unpredictable and they have no idea what they're going to do on any given day and the return they have on advertising on x is not worth the risk of suddenly showing up to an anti-semitic tweet or something like that and as long as elon is in charge, i'm not sure that they can mack make a living with advertising alone and what are the other business options out there. they're bleak at the moment and we'll see if we can come up with something and i don't think advertising will be the one thing like it was during twitter 1.0. >> one of the suggestions i would make if i was a business consultant, bring me a new ceo, someone who knows advertising and step away from the business and then you've solved your problems which is something like what he did, but he didn't quite get it over the line. >> you did half the

recommendation. bring in the ceo that knows the business very well and that was lynda yaccarino that came over from nbc. until he does, lynda can go out there and her team can go out and sell, sell, sell, but there will always be a cloud hanging over those efforts. >> do you think she realizes that this is not something that as long as he's there, that advertisers, you know, have that risk aversion? >> yeah. i mean, i would hope so. it seems obvious to me that this is the issue and all you have to do is talk to these big brands and ask why they're not spending on x and that's what they would tell you. >> linda has bought in to the elon musk mission and the mindset, bring free speech to twitter and consequences be damned and even though she might know this is a problem and if you've bought into the mission

you've overlooked these things. >> i'll switch to x for this next question because it is now x and that is you're still on x and i'm still on x, too. >> i still get value from it, quite frankly and a following on x especially when you're out trying to promote a book about the company and for me it was sort of like, well, these are people who clearly know the business and know the product and they might be interested in my work and you start at the top and it's become less helpful for breaking news and i totally agree with you. so we'll see if this relationship extends long term, but i think for now, i do get value from it, just want quite as much as i did before. >> kurt wagner is the author for the battle for the bird. we appreciate you being here this morning and "press: here" will be back. "battle for the bi. we appreciate you being here this morning and "press: here" will be back. " we appreciate you being here this morning and "press: here"

will be back.

that's our show for this week. my thanks to our guests and thank you for making us a part of your sunday morning. what do i see in peter dixon? i see my husband... the father of our girls. i see a public servant. a man who served under secretary clinton in the state department... where he took on the epidemic of violence against women in the congo. i see a fighter, a tenacious problem-solver...

who will go to congress and protect abortion rights and our democracy. because he sees a better future for all of us. i'm peter dixon and i approved this message. "overflowing with ideas and energy." that's the san francisco chronicle endorsing democrat katie porter for senate over all other options. porter is "easily the most impressive candidate." "known for her grilling of corporate executives." with "deep policy knowledge." katie porter's housing plan has "bipartisan-friendly ideas to bring homebuilding costs down."

and the chronicle praises "her ideas to end soft corruption in politics." let's shake up the senate. with democrat katie porter. i'm katie porter and i approve this message. ♪