Associated Incidents
During an event in Paysandú, Alejandro "Pacha" Sánchez, campaign manager for Yamandú Orsi, warned about the possible dissemination of a false interview with the Frente Amplio candidate, generated by artificial intelligence.
He expressed his concern about the information received about the possible use of this technology to disseminate statements not made by the candidate. Sánchez emphasized that, if carried out, this act would be a serious attack on democracy and the electoral process in Uruguay.
We are very concerned about this closing of the campaign. "We have received some information that an interview with Yamandú Orsi could be being generated using artificial intelligence," Sánchez reported. "When we live in a world where artificial intelligence can make a person appear to say what they have not said, we have to be extremely careful," he warned, pointing out that these tactics could be part of a dirty campaign in the country in the face of the next elections. Blanca Rodríguez, a candidate for the Senate for the Frente Amplio and independent within list 609, joined Sánchez's concern.
Through a publication on X, Rodríguez underlined the unprecedented seriousness of such a situation in Uruguay, calling for this campaign to avoid engaging in these harmful practices. "There is no precedent in Uruguay of something so serious and it would be good if this campaign did not generate it either," Rodríguez said.
The fake interview was created by Santo y Seña: this is how Ignacio Álvarez showed it
After this alert, the journalist Ignacio Álvarez was the one who spread the apocryphal interview, simulated with artificial intelligence, after the Frente Amplio candidate refused to participate in his program Santo y Seña.
Faced with this decision, the producers of the program made an unprecedented decision in Uruguay that caused controversy and concern: resorting to Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create a virtual representation of the politician and placing it in the channel's studio next to the Colorado candidate Andrés Ojeda, who was physically present.
Ignacio Álvarez, the presenter of the program, had previously expressed on social media his discontent with Orsi's refusal to participate in "Santo y Seña."
"On August 14, I spoke with Yamandú Orsi and proposed to interview him in Santo y Seña when it suited him. He told me that he would talk to his team and call me. Since September 7, I sent him messages and audios that he never answered, so last week I contacted Fernando Pereira, who promised to give me an answer; until after insisting on several other occasions, he kindly just told me that 'They have decided not to go'," the communicator wrote on X.com.
The fear in the Frente Amplio is that, although nothing that the "false Orsi" says in the fictitious interview will have been said by the real presidential candidate, clippings of this creation can go viral on social networks as true assertions and create new defamatory campaigns through fake news.