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CNN International: Ukraine Claims It Destroyed Russian Landing Ship in Crimea; Gangs Force Trafficking Victims to Scam Americans Online; Social Media, Tech and AI Trends for the New Year. Aired 4:30- 5a ET

Aired December 27, 2023 - 04:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[04:30:00]

BIANCA NOBILO, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Bianca Nobilo. And if you're just joining us, let me bring you up to date with our top stories this hour.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas are expected to meet with the Mexican president today as thousands of migrants have joined a caravan headed for the border between the two countries.

South Korean actor Lee Sun-kyun, known for his role in "Parasite", has been found dead and police say that suicide is suspected. His agency says the funeral will be held quietly with family members and colleagues.

The Ukrainian military claims it destroyed a Russian navy landing ship in Crimea in an overnight strike on Tuesday. You can see that massive explosion there. CNN has not been able to independently verify that it was destroyed. The Russian defense ministry doesn't say the ship was destroyed but does admit that it was damaged in the Ukrainian attack.

Meantime, Ukraine's top general says Ukrainian forces have now withdrawn to the outskirts of Marinka, a strategically important village in the eastern Donetsk region. He compared the fighting in Marinka to the battle for Bakhmut.

For more now, CNN Portugal's Helena Lins joins us live from Kyiv in Ukraine. Helena, obviously this explosion in Crimea could be a huge success for the Ukrainians and it's distracting, but let's focus on what's happening on the battlefield.

So, the Ukrainians have retreated from Marinka, which marks their most significant retreat, Russia's biggest gain really in the last six months.

HELENA LINS, CNN PORTUGAL INTERNATIONAL REPORTER: Hello, Bianca. Yes, nice to see you again.

As you were saying, it seems that Russians are downplaying this attack to the navy ship in Crimea. But for Ukrainians, this is a big achievement. And reportedly, this ship was being used to transport Shahed drones, which have been largely used to attack Ukraine. Just overnight, there were around 46 drones launched to Ukraine. Russia launched around 46 drones to Ukraine, mostly in the south, in Kherson and Odessa region. The Ukrainian air defenses were working for about seven hours and the Ukraine air force says they managed to shut down around 32 of those drones.

But yet some of those drones were not shot down and therefore there are some sites that have been damaged. For example, a shopping center in Kherson, also some buildings and in Odessa. A drone that was actually shot down, fell on houses in the suburbs and there is at least one person dead and a few people injured.

But as you were saying, on the frontline, the news that comes from Marinka is also a highlight of this war, especially at this time of the year. It's almost two years since the war in Ukraine started, since Russia invaded Ukraine and for the past few days there has been some dispute whether or not Ukrainian troops were still in this village.

Well, now Ukraine says that the troops have withdrawn, that lives have to be saved and that there is pretty much nothing left of this village.

NOBILO: Helena Lins for us in Kyiv, Ukraine. Thank you.

Criminal gangs apparently based in war-torn Myanmar near the Thai border are scamming millions of dollars online from thousands of unsuspecting Americans and they're forcing human trafficking victims to do their dirty work. CNN's Ivan Watson filed this report from the Thai border.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please help me, Jessica. Please help me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's been a living hell.

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Northern California, CY is piecing together his life after losing more than a million dollars in a crypto scam.

CY: I can never forget or forgive myself losing that kind of money.

WATSON (voice-over): CY is one of tens of thousands of victims of a fast-growing new form of financial fraud called pig butchering. He asks to remain anonymous to protect his family.

It started in October 2021 with a text message from a stranger.

WATSON: What was the name of the person you were communicating with?

CY: She claims her name is Jessica.

WATSON (voice-over): The two quickly became friends. She shared photos and CY talked about the pain of caring for his dying father. After nearly a month, the conversation turned to money. [04:35:00]

CY: She started to introduce me into cryptocurrency, trading gold using cryptocurrency.

WATSON (voice-over): Jessica showed CY how to invest by installing a trading app on his phone that he says looked legit. Little did he know, he was a victim, pumping money into a sophisticated con. For the scammers, a pig fattened up for the slaughter.

CY: I logged back in. The account is gone. What did I do? That's 30 years of my wife and my life building up this wealth.

WATSON (voice-over): Wealth that had suddenly disappeared. Panicking, CY begged Jessica for help.

CY: Please help me. I don't know what else I can do. I don't have any more money. I cannot buy anything else. I lost everything.

WATSON (voice-over): But Jessica disappeared and probably never even existed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the professionalization of fraud services.

WATSON (voice-over): The FBI says it's seen exponential growth in losses due to pig butchering scams.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The bad guys are getting good and they're getting better.

WATSON (voice-over): An organization representing scam victims tracked their crypto transfers halfway around the world to this border region in Myanmar.

WATSON: U.S. scam victims say they've been able to trace their money to places like this. This walled compound across the river is just inside the territory of Myanmar. And that is where we're learning about the conditions inside that some people who work there, they say that they were forced against their will to try to scam Americans out of their hard-earned money in conditions that they describe as amounting to modern-day slavery.

WATSON (voice-over): This compound is where an Indian man named Rakesh says he was forced to work for more than 11 months without pay for a Chinese criminal gang.

WATSON: The guards have spotted us.

WATSON (voice-over): Until they recently released him back to Thailand.

WATSON: Where was the job supposed to be?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They told me it was for Bangkok.

WATSON (voice-over): He too was the victim of a scam. Rakesh, who doesn't want to be identified, says he first flew to Thailand for what he thought was an IT job. Instead, he says he was tricked into crossing the border to Myanmar where a Chinese gangster told him to work or else.

WATSON: He threatened to kill you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah. He warned me like that.

WATSON (voice-over): And the job? Spend 16 hours a day on social media targeting Americans with a fake profile.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Like they provided us. I got a Russian girl. With using a Russian girl fake profile, I need to scam people.

WATSON (voice-over): Posing as a Salt Lake City-based investor named Klara Simonov, Rakesh flirted online with potential targets.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 70 to 80 percent fall for fake love.

WATSON (voice-over): Rakesh shows secretly filmed images of what at first glance seems to be an ordinary office. But he says the bosses routinely punished workers, forcing them to do hundreds of squats and beating them if they didn't produce.

WATSON: And you've helped rescue people who were trapped inside behind the barbed wire of that very compound.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.

WATSON (voice-over): Mechelle Moore is one of a group of aid workers based in Thailand who have helped rescue hundreds of victims of trafficking like Rakesh over the last 18 months. She drives me along the border.

MECHELLE MOORE, GLOBAL AIMS: There, there's a guard tower just there. Green roof.

WATSON (voice-over): Showing compounds only a stone's throw away where she says trafficked victims are forced to work as online scammers.

MOORE: That's why this is modern slavery and it's right under everybody's nose.

WATSON (voice-over): Satellite images show rapid construction of these compounds on the border territory of Myanmar over just three years. Thailand's minister of justice labels these facilities as hubs for criminal scamming activity.

TAWEE SODSONG, THAI JUSTICE MINISTER (through translator): These scammers have to use telephone signals to communicate. That's why they base themselves near the Thai border, so they can use Thailand's telephone network.

WATSON (voice-over): But he says Thailand has no jurisdiction to crack down on suspected criminals operating across the border in Myanmar. CNN asked the military government in Myanmar why it hasn't taken

action against alleged criminal gangs operating on its territory and did not receive an answer.

So, for now, it looks like no one is going to stop this poisonous cycle of exploitation.

Ivan Watson, CNN, on the Thai border with Myanmar.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NOBILO: What will the trends for social media and technology be for the new year? We'll get some predictions from an expert on artificial intelligence.

Plus, if you're looking to spend some holiday gift money on a new Apple Watch, you may be out of luck ahead. Ahead, company's fight to keep its smart watches on store shelves.

[04:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOBILO: Welcome back.

There were some seismic shifts in the social media and tech world this year. Billionaire businessman Elon Musk rebranded Twitter as X. Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg launched Threads. And the popularity of artificial intelligence, or AI, exploded so fast that it made our heads spin. And 2024 may see even bigger changes.

Joining us now to discuss the trends for next year is Henry Ajder, generative AI expert and the founder of Latent Space Advisory. Thanks so much for being with us today, Henry.

HENRY AJDER, GENERATIVE AI EXPERT: My pleasure.

NOBILO: So, let's start with the practicalities, and then I'd love to get into sort of more philosophical, existential questions about this. There are so many elections next year, from the U.S. to the EU, Indonesia, India. There are tons. How do you see AI impacting those elections and government's inability, perhaps, to moderate them, the potential for different parts of society to be marginalized?

AJDER: Yes, so next year we have 76 countries, I believe, voting in elections, a quarter of the world's population. And for many years now, I've been asked, every kind of U.S. election in particular, is this going to be the one that, let's say, a deep fake, a realistic fake video or audio kind of causes chaos, destabilizes an election, or even potentially swings the result? And up until recently, I've kind of said, you know, this has been something that is, you know, much more costly to produce than, let's say, more traditional manipulated media.

But that's really changed over the last year. As you said, this has really exploded the use of particularly generative AI. And the kind of impact we're seeing of this technology on electoral processes already, even in 2023, have been pretty significant.

We've seen in Slovakia, for example, fake audio of the candidate ended up losing, going viral on the messaging app Telegram.

[04:45:00]

And indeed, here in the U.K., we've seen some examples of the opposition leader being targeted. And indeed, the U.S., particularly on social media, satirical deep fakes, kind of memes, but also deceptive disinformation spreading quite fast.

So, I think we're really going to see a lot of attempts to use deepfakes and AI in the electoral process, particularly on social media, to try and influence voters' opinions and potentially results.

There's still a question mark about how effective it will be. We still don't really have really sophisticated data or research on how much more persuasive they might be. But in my mind, it's pretty clear they're going to have some impact.

In terms of what governments are doing, that's something which is more difficult. We're seeing the Electoral Commission in the U.S. looking at, for example, restricting deepfakes or synthetic media in campaigns by politicians, something we saw in Argentina this year. But it's a space which is incredibly hard to kind of really get a full control of because of the amount of content that's now being created, particularly on social platforms.

NOBILO: Exactly, especially when a lot of the material that goes viral around elections isn't generated by the leaders themselves or the people that are actually standing for office.

And I'm always reminded of that moment in 2018 when Mark Zuckerberg was facing Congress and providing testimony, and it just showed that discrepancy between how far behind politicians are when it comes to a lot of this technology.

A refrain I keep hearing is about how generative AI will become mainstream in 2024. Obviously, things like ChatGPT are widely available now. So, what will that mean in practice for people?

AJDER: Well, I guess maybe living in my little AI bubble, I think it already really has become mainstream in 2023. I mean, you're right, ChatGPT, but also other large language models like text generating models, but also image generation tools such as Midjourney. You know, these are really taking off and they're getting baked into existing products -- existing software, sorry -- in a way that, you know, I couldn't have predicted a couple of years ago. It really has been truly exponential in the true sense of the term. And indeed, it's moving forward into new mediums.

So, for example, text to video is getting very sophisticated very quickly. That is typing in a prompt and getting full, fully fledged video content off the back, as well as what we're seeing with what are called auto agents.

This is kind of using AI not just to kind of generate content that you then use, but actually asking it to execute kind of goals or tasks.

And regulators are really kind of struggling on one level, although I do think the deepfake problem is something they have had to get to grips with, because of course they are kind of uniquely vulnerable in their positions. But legislators around the world are kind of really grappling with this.

We obviously saw the U.K. host the AI Safety Summit this year. We saw Biden issued the executive order. And the EU AI Act has been kind of finalized, although it's not been enacted.

But there is still a discrepancy between kind of how society and legislators understand this technology and how we understand the impacts of a lot of these technologies. They're moving very, very fast. But a lot of the kind of impacts may not necessarily be obvious until they become really embedded and have had time to kind of seep into everyday life in a way that, as I said, I think is already happening.

But you're right, in 2024, I think we're going to see it on a whole other level.

NOBILO: Precisely. And with that proliferation, what challenges does that present to individuals in terms of their privacy and security? What transparency will we see from companies that are using AI? And also, what will be available to people to control what data about themselves is being used to train AI?

AJDER: Well, you're absolutely right. That you know, data is the fuel that is powering this kind of AI revolution, along with massive amounts of compute, a lot of hardware, computational hardware.

And a lot of that data has been gathered, scraped effectively from the Internet, particularly when it comes to text, but also images and indeed audio. And this is one of the big kind of battles going on right now between some of the big tech companies and some of the big publishers. But also, as you say, it's the everyday person as well, who might be publishing posts on social media. It might be their images. It might be their artwork that they're generating.

There's a lot of people that think that copyright is no longer really fit for purpose in the AI age and that private individuals are kind of uniquely vulnerable in some respects to their likeness or their content being taken. It's a really difficult one to kind of get a grip on. And I think a lot of the cases that are ongoing at the moment will set precedence here.

There have been some going more for the big tech companies. There have been some going against.

[04:50:00]

But I think one thing that people really are going to want is transparency about the content they're consuming. At the moment, a lot of AI content is kind of hidden in plain sight, right? It's very realistic. It looks like it's real, but people don't have a way to necessarily know that.

And I think in 2024, we're going to see a real emphasis of people wanting just transparency. It's not about saying kind of guiltily, oh, this is AI generated, but kind of just letting people know what they're consuming, how it's being made, both to kind of give that sort of just general transparency, but also to help fight things like fakes and elections.

People at places like the Content Authenticity Initiative are doing really important work. It's trying to build a new kind of technical standard to provide that transparency.

But you're absolutely right. Private individuals, the everyday person, you know, there are lots of ways this is impacting them, both in terms of building the models and their data, but also how they're going to interact with AI in a kind of a transparent and clear way. I think that's going to be really, really important to how we kind of integrate this technology responsibly into society and the products we use every day.

NOBILO: Henry, I'm so sorry. We've got to go. I wish we had hours to do this. Just very quickly to you, what's the thing you're most excited about from AI in 2024 and the thing that most concerns you?

AJDER: I think we've already covered it. I think the thing I'm most excited about is AI video. I think that is moving incredibly fast, really exciting, really realistic results. I think the election question is the big one. I think there's a chance that we're going to see this have a significant impact on an election. And I hope it's not kind of too little too late in terms of mitigations from both government and social media companies.

NOBILO: Henry Ajder, thank you so much for joining us. Great chatting.

AJDER: Thank you.

NOBILO: We'll be right back.

[04:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOBILO: The Detroit Pistons have a new place in the record books, but it's not a record any team would want. The Pistons lost their 27th consecutive game on Tuesday, earning them the longest losing streak in a single NBA season. And things won't get any easier as the Pistons face the league's best team, the Boston Celtics, on Thursday.

In the English Premier League, Manchester United overcame a two-goal deficit to beat third-ranked Aston Villa on Tuesday, due in part to Man U's Danish superstar, Rasmus Hojlund. The 20-year-old scored the game-winner in the 82nd minute, ending his league drought of more than 1,000 minutes without netting a goal.

And finally, a cat is believed to have made history as he set sail as part of a boat's crew in the annual Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. Ollie and his owner, Bob Williams, with their co-skipper, Chris Warren, set off for Hobart on Tuesday. And they hope to arrive before New Year's Eve. There we go, that's the video I was waiting for. So cute. There's been no official record of a cat on board in the race's 78-year history. So, we've got a record breaker right there.

That does it here on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Bianca Nobilo and "EARLY START" is next. I will see you tomorrow.

END