The Seven Network is said to be “investigating” how its YouTube channel, and those of its news arm and shambolic current affairs show Spotlight, was hacked and turned into a fake Tesla site, complete with “deepfake” Elon Musk spruiking a crypto scam.
Whoever they are, the hacker probably made more money in a few hours than Seven — which soared back to 18 cents on the ASX yesterday — has made in the past few years. Indeed, if Seven is able to track down the hacker, perhaps it should offer them a job. Crypto scammer, we would all agree, is a slightly better CV than murderer and war criminal.
A deepfake Musk telling people they could double their money by handing it over is only the latest of many celebrities to be contorted by AI into flogging the internet version of a used car, continuing proof that any new communications technology will be automatically used by the grubbiest of entrepreneurs to exploit the dumbest of consumers.
But if a Nigerian prince offering to share the immense wealth and prosperity of his great nation, having come into possession of a fortune worth $100,000, reflects only on the gullibility of the email reader it’s aimed at, the uncannily lifelike Musk — a rare case of a celebrity who looks more human in AI than in reality — reflects the growing void between reality and what Seven and many of its media counterparts broadcast.
Indeed, the faux-Musk that briefly represented Seven’s YouTube offering had more credibility than Spotlight giving a platform to rapist Bruce Lehrmann, whose image was carefully ushered onto our screens not via manipulation of zeroes and ones but by ego manipulation involving rent, meals and — according to one former producer — cocaine and sex workers. Fake Musk was engaged in the honest endeavour of trying to part fools from their money. Spotlight’s agenda? To platform a rapist and destroy the credibility of the woman who claimed Lehrmann raped her.
Certainly it had more credibility than Seven falsely claiming a Sydney student had perpetrated the Bondi stabbings. Or the network’s support for Ben Roberts-Smith. Or its platforming of neo-Nazis — hell, fake Musk could have neatly segued from pointing to the QR code where you could hand over money to defending Seven giving a platform to Blair Cottrell to opine about African gangs.
Indeed, there’s no reason why Seven, in the midst of slashing staff even as we speak, can’t go fully AI in its news and current affairs. Already its news bulletins are only a simulacra of real news — or more accurately a restaging of half-remembered news broadcasts from the analogue age.
Those live crosses to a journalist at a location vaguely related to the item at hand, designed to mimic live reporting of real events, could be rendered far more cheaply via AI rather than dispatching some luckless journo and cammo to, say, an empty sports stadium, there to stand shivering and nodding. PR-based puff pieces needn’t even be manufactured on the network’s computers — Seven could just broadcast a fully-prepared package direct from the PR firm. AI could also pick and choose which dashcam and CCTV footage makes the grade for broadcast, and prepare the witless voiceover — “terror today for Canterbury pedestrians as a runaway ute barely missed…”
It is entirely apt that Seven News’ YouTube channel got Muskified as well. Most of its evening news bulletin (although Seven’s commercial rivals are little better) is given over to puff pieces, dashcam footage and nodding journalists offering “back to you Mark”, all of which is filler between the real content that is advertising. The ads might be better regulated and more subtle than a crypto scam but are ultimately about the same thing.
The “hacking” of Seven should indeed be investigated, for it shows the future of commercial news in Australia, the next step in the digitisation of corporate news and current affairs. Seven may not be able to double its money but it can probably halve its costs in producing the same parody of journalism it’s already making.
