TULSA, OKLA. (KTUL) — For the first time, Oklahoma State Representative and Democratic Party Chair John Waldron is speaking out after becoming the target of a deepfake incident involving artificial intelligence.
The attack, which circulated just days before the election for Democratic Party Chair, involved falsified audio recordings that portrayed Waldron making racist remarks.
“My political career flashed before my eyes,” Waldron told NewsChannel 8 in an exclusive interview.
The controversy began when an article was published along with AI-generated audio, allegedly of Waldron, making offensive and racially charged comments about former Democratic
“I will tell you that from what I’ve seen in the last couple of years. Alicia is only the chair now because she’s black,” the fabricated audio falsely claimed.
Waldron quickly responded, denouncing the audio as a fake. “Those weren’t my words,” he said. “The Black Wall Street Times ran it and did a retraction proving exactly how it was done. The software they used proved that the audio fake was 95 to 99 percent synthetic.”
Deon Osborne, Managing Editor of The Black Wall Street Times, explained how the fabricated audio came across his desk and what steps were taken once it was discovered to be fake.
“I was sent the audio from a reliable source, someone I’ve known for over ten years, someone high up in the Democratic Party,” Osborne said. “I had every reason to believe it was real. I failed to do my due diligence in this new world we live in with AI.”
Once his team used AI detection tools and confirmed the audio was generated, Osborne and the Black Wall Street Times issued a public retraction and apology.
“We realized we needed to put out a retraction, we needed to make an apology, and we needed to cooperate with any investigations to figure out how this happened,” Osborne added.
The timing of the audio’s release happened only days before the Democratic Party chair election.
“If it was used to try to defeat me as a candidate for Chair, well, that was an attempt to interfere with an election using this new technology,” Waldron said. “If we can use AI to attack our elections, then our entire democracy is at stake.”
As AI becomes increasingly advanced and accessible, the lines between what is real versus what is AI-generated are harder to distinguish.
“We have to expand our understanding of this technology,” Osborne said. “We have to expand training and be more diligent when any piece of information comes across our desk, even from reliable sources, because often those sources can be bamboozled.”
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation is now actively investigating the origins of the deepfake recording and who was responsible for distributing it to The Black Wall Street Times and others.
NewsChannel 8 will continue to follow this developing story and provide updates as they become available.
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