University Of Pennsylvania Student Becomes Victim Of AI Abuse On Chinese Social Media

Olga Loiek, a student at Pennsylvania University, has her face digitally cloned. (photo: x @Byron_Wan)

JAKARTA - Olga Loiek, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, is looking for an audience on the internet - but events are not expected to emerge. Shortly after launching a YouTube channel in November last year, Loiek, 21 years old from Ukraine, found that his image had been taken and processed through artificial intelligence to create alter egos on Chinese social media platforms.

His digital dubs - "Natasha" - claims to be a Russian woman who is fluent in Mandarin and wants to thank China for her support for Russia while making a little money selling products such as Russian candy.

Moreover, these fake accounts have hundreds of thousands of followers in China, far more than Loiek himself.

"It's really like my face speaks Mandarin and, in the background, I saw the Kremlin and Moscow, and I talked about how great Russia and China are," Loiek was quoted as saying by VOI from Reuters. "It's terrible, because these are things I'll never say in my life."

Loiek's case represents an increase in the number of apparently Russian women on Chinese social media who show their love for China in fluent Mandarin and say they want to support Russia in the war by selling imported products from their homeland.

However, none of them really exist. According to experts, they are produced by AI by abusing original women's clips found online, often without their knowledge, and these videos made by fake avatars are used to market products to single Chinese men.

Accounts created with Loiek images have hundreds of thousands of followers and have sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of products, including candy. Some posts contain accounts that say they might be made using AI.

Avatars like Loiek's take advantage of the "infinity" partnership between Russia and China, announced in 2022 when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Beijing days before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Jim Chai, CEO of XMOV, a company that develops advanced AI technology and is not involved in the Loiek situation, says that the technology to create such images is "very common because many people use it in China."

"For example, to produce my own 2D digital human, I just need to record a 30-minute video about myself, and after it's finished, I edited the video. Of course, it looks very real, and if you change the language, the only thing that needs to be adjusted is lip synchronization," Chai said.

Artificial intelligence is a topic of debate and Loiek's story highlights the risk of illegal or unethical use because powerful tools to create and spread content are commonplace around the world.

Concerns about AI contributing to copyrighted misinformation, fake news and material have increased in recent months in line with the popularity of generative AI systems such as ChatGPT.

In January, China issued draft guidelines to standardize the AI industry, proposing the establishment of more than 50 national and industrial standards by 2026. The European Union AI law, which imposes strict transparency obligations on high-risk AI systems, comes into effect this month, setting global standard potential.

However, Xin Dai, professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Peaking, said that regulations are trying to catch up with the rapid development of AI.

"We can only predict that with the stronger tool to create information, create content, and disseminate content that becomes available basically every next minute," Dai said. "I think the critical thing here is its huge volume... not only in China, but also on the internet in general all over the place."