QUEENSRŸCHE's TODD LA TORRE Warns Of Danger Of Deepfake Technology In Digital Age

In a new interview with FaceCulture, QUEENSRŸCHE singer Todd La Torre talked about the deepfake technology, one of the most worrying fruits of rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI),which allows those who wield it to create audio and video representations of real people saying and doing made-up things. In a deepfake, individuals train computers to mimic real people to make what appears to be an authentic video.

La Torre said that it is clear that when used by nefarious actors, synthetic (AI-generated) media can pose a significant risk to individuals, businesses, and societies more generally.

"When it sounds real, and then you see [the person in the video at] a little bit of a distance… Maybe it's a world leader… and it looks like the real person saying, 'We are gonna wage war against Islam. We're gonna wage war against the West. We're gonna wage war against you.' And people are gonna look, and then they're gonna say he said that. And there could be so much damage before… Now you're trying to clean up the mess," he said. "And at that point, at least in the U.S. — I don't know what it's like over [in the Netherlands, where the FaceCulture interviewer is based] — but people already justify ridiculous shit that is real. Like you saying, 'Oh, this person said that.' 'Well, that's not what he meant.' There's all this justification for things that are actually said that are not good. Now, can you imagine horrible, faked things? I mean, you could have a celebrity thing turned into like an inappropriate video. And somebody claims something, and a woman could say, 'That's not me.' And you say, 'Well, look at the video. You did it.' And now this woman is shamed publicly for something she didn't do. But when your eyes see what they see and you are convinced, it's really hard to unconvince somebody. And when the technology can be so convincing, how do you distinguish what's real and what's not real? The only way you could do that is if there's information within that, whatever it is. Just like there's metadata in photographs, videos — you know, there's things in there that a computer scientist could tear that thing apart and say, 'Here's the origin of this. This is the equipment that it was created on. This is the day and time,' and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But who wants to go through all that when you've already been accused of being a pedophile or a rapist or a thief or a racist or whatever — anything bad. So that that can be really scary."

La Torre went on to say that AI can't replace a live performance. "Okay, you can have a hologram. Well, it looks real, but it's not real," he explained. "And people like to know that I'm watching [a musician] play his piano or his keyboard in real… This is the real guy. And no matter how simulated something could seem, human beings, we understand that human connection. And I don't think AI's gonna be able to do that. But it kind of sucks where AI could…

"There was a thing on a guy's channel, and it was talking about AI. And it's a guy named Rick Beato, and he was talking about AI and this whole Drake thing. He's like this rap guy, whatever, but he is like really famous and probably has tons of money, whatever. But there was a fake, there was an AI of this artist. [And] some people were saying they like the AI artist better than the real artist and what it produced. That's scary."

Last month, QUEENSRŸCHE released a fully AI-generated video for the song "Tormentum", taken from the band's latest album, 2022's "Digital Noise Alliance". The clip was directed by Above The Void.

QUEENSRŸCHE recently completed its 2023 U.S. headlining tour with support from former MEGADETH guitarist Marty Friedman and TRAUMA. On that tour, QUEENSRŸCHE's 18-song set included no less than five songs from the band's sixteenth studio album, "Digital Noise Alliance", which came out last October via Century Media. The record was once again helmed by Chris "Zeuss" Harris, who previously worked with QUEENSRŸCHE on 2015's "Condition Hüman" and 2019's "The Verdict" LPs.