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Paul McCartney: AI Used To Produce "Final" Beatles Song; Sen. J.D. Vance Vows To Block Biden's DOJ Nominees; Students Grade America's Schools In New Poll. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired June 14, 2023 - 07:30   ET

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

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[07:32:21]

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NHL ANNOUNCER: It has happened in Vegas. The cup is going to stay in Vegas. And for the first time, the Golden Knights are Stanley Cup champions.

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PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Noted in historic hockey town Las Vegas, congratulations. It's the first Stanley Cup for the Vegas Golden Knights and I'm pretty sure it won't be the first party Las Vegas has ever seen. The Golden Knights defeated the Florida Panthers 9-3 last night in Las Vegas wrapping up the series in five games.

Vegas captain Mark Stone had a goal in each period -- the first player since 1922 to net a hat trick in the Stanley Cup-clinching win.

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MARK STONE, CAPTAIN, VEGAS GOLDEN KNIGHTS: Unbelievable. I just looked in my teammates' eyes when I got it. One of the craziest feelings I've ever had. Just to know that I did it with my 25-30 best friends make it that much more special.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Yes. They won the cup in just their sixth season as an NHL franchise. As an Ohio sports fan that feels unfair.

Also this morning, new music coming from The Beatles thanks to artificial intelligence. Paul McCartney telling BBC Radio that artificial intelligence was used to isolate John Lennon's voice from an old demo in order to finish a song that will be released -- wait for it -- this year.

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PAUL MCCARTNEY, SINGER-SONGWRITER: So it has great uses. So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles record -- it was a demo that John had that we worked on and we've just finished it up. It will be released this year. We were able to take John's voice and get it pure through this AI. So then we could mix the record as you would normally do, you know. So it gives you -- it gives you some sort of leeway. So there's a good side to it and then a scary side.

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MATTINGLY: And joining us now is CNN senior media analyst and senior media reporter for Axios, Sara Fischer. And CNN chief legal analyst, Laura Coates back with us. We won't let her leave.

Sara, I want to start with you. I'm fascinated to see how Beatles fans take this. How everyone takes this.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Is that why you asked me if I was a Beatles fan?

MATTINGLY: Yes. I wanted to gauge your interest impact.

HARLOW: Who is not a Beatles fan?

MATTINGLY: But McCartney saying, on the end there, the good side and the scary side.

HARLOW: Yes.

MATTINGLY: There's a lot of talk about the scary side but there's got to be some good side to it, too.

What's your sense of what this development means as we all try and figure this out right now?

SARA FISCHER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA ANALYST, SENIOR MEDIA REPORTER, AXIOS: It's all about permission. Like, that's been the huge issue with AI is whether or not people are violating copyright laws. Whether or not people have permission to use someone's IP, their voice, their likeness.

[07:35:00]

What this signals is that this could be a really great thing if you have someone's permission to do it and if you're working collaboratively. Now, obviously, it's hard when somebody is deceased to go back and get their permission. In this case, it's band members and it's close colleagues, friends. It makes sense that they would want this to move forward.

I think Beatles fans are going to obviously be excited. This is going to be their last album. They're going to get to hear a voice they wouldn't have otherwise heard.

But to Paul McCartney's point, there could be a downside if somebody who wasn't doing this with consent was trying to put out another Beatles album. We would have a problem.

HARLOW: Laura, who owns the voice then? Who owns the John Lennon AI -- LAURA COATES, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR, SIRIUSXM HOST, "THE LAURA COATES SHOW": Well, that's the next frontier --

HARLOW: -- voice?

COATES: -- of all this, right? And first of all, AI would be hard- pressed to be able to copy the lyric of, like, "I Am the Walrus. I am the egg man. Goo goo g'joob." Good luck, AI, on that.

HARLOW: Right.

COATES: But -- so you don't know what to do. You have no idea what my playlist is. Like, you -- you don't even know. I'll do a whole thing all day.

MATTINGLY: I just love that you're challenging AI.

COATES: I'm just saying.

MATTINGLY: This is really going to work against you when it takes over the world.

COATES: I challenge -- you now, you're right.

MATTINGLY: (INAUDIBLE).

COATES: I'm just kidding.

But the idea of intellectual property -- you're so right about this. Because it's one thing if it's sort of a tongue-in-cheek or at the permission of somebody. But what about the estate of somebody who is not giving --

HARLOW: Yes.

COATES: -- the permission? What about somebody whose voice is being used for a track -- for a collaborative effort that they do not want to have there? You can say it's not actually your voice; it's your likeness. There are laws to protect that sort of thing but they have not caught up with AI in any stretch.

And Congress really hard-pressed to be able to be at the forefront of advancement for technology to be able to figure out do you regulate it or do you regulate the behavior itself, or do you regulate the ability to use it in the first instance?

Remember, Elon Musk -- I think Steve Wozniak recently came out with a letter to talk about the challenges of AI. But in the form of creative expression -- I mean, it's incredible to think about being able to recreate something like this in this fashion, but there have got to be guardrails.

MATTINGLY: Well, and I think it's -- like the risks -- the same day this story is coming out there's a hearing in the Senate. The Senate Judiciary Committee holding a hearing on artificial intelligence and human rights on Tuesday.

Lawmakers heard from a woman who is the victim of a deepfake kidnapping-extortion scam in which scammers used her daughter's voice to demand millions of dollars in ransom. The plot was exposed as a scam by the police. They told her nothing that they could do to seek justice because no real crime was committed.

Listen to what she told the committee.

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JENNIFER DESTEFANO, VICTIM OF AI DEEPFAKE KIDNAPPING/EXTORTION SCAM: I will never be able to shake that voice and the desperate cries for help out of my mind. It's every parent's worst nightmare to hear your child pleading with fear and pain, knowing that they're being harmed and you're helpless.

The longer this form of terror remains unpunishable the farther and more egregious it will become. There is no limit to the depth of evil AI can enable.

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MATTINGLY: Sara, Laura makes a great point. Lawmakers are not on the forefront of this stuff. They generally are behind about everyone else in terms of understanding and the ability to do something.

What can be done, even in the regulatory space or in the legislative space?

FISCHER: So in the social media era, lawmakers were so slow, Phil, to get on top of this. At least now we are not even a year into the generative AI era in terms of it being made public and lawmakers are already doing educational hearings. So that gives me a little bit of optimism.

What can they do? They can do transparency efforts, meaning people who are creating AI need to be transparent about how they're programming it -- things like that. They can have disclosure hearings where people need to disclose sort of what types of tools they're using to train their programs. So there's a lot of things that they could pass. Congress is gridlocked but this seems to be an issue where there is bipartisan support.

The one thing I will say, though, I think a lot of these issues will get litigated in courts. I think you're going to have people who are going to go and sue different companies because their main image and likeness are being used in ways that they didn't give permission or because they feel like they're being scammed. And the court will then have to sort of interpret where our current laws stand to adhere to AI.

HARLOW: We're out of time.

MATTINGLY: I do want the record to reflect she's optimistic about Congress -- HARLOW: I had -- that's true.

MATTINGLY: -- Sara Fischer.

HARLOW: He looked at me because I had another question but I'll ask you next time.

MATTINGLY: I know. We're going to get -- we're going to get yelled at if we don't go.

Guys, thank you so much. That was great.

HARLOW: Thank you very much.

Republican Sen. J.D. Vance says he will hold the Biden administration's judicial nominees -- hold them up indefinitely because of the Trump indictment. The impact and reaction ahead.

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[07:42:44]

MATTINGLY: Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance is vowing to block all of President Biden's Justice Department nominees in protest of former President Trump's indictment.

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SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH): And Donald Trump is going to be put in prison for the rest of his life -- that's what they're trying to do -- for declassifying documents as he has the constitutional authority to do. It's crazy.

And we cannot continue to give the Department of Justice free rein --

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST, "THE INGRAHAM ANGLE": Or money.

VANCE: -- to set themselves loose on --

INGRAHAM: Funding.

VANCE: -- the American people. Unlimited funding, unlimited resources, and unlimited personnel. We can't as a U.S. Senate effectively grind the appointments process in Merrick Garland's Department of Justice to a halt. Why don't we do it? The American people I think expect it of us.

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MATTINGLY: CNN congressional correspondent Lauren Fox is live on Capitol Hill this morning. Fox, I want to deconstruct, like, that entire statement based on the difference between nominations and appropriations and actual funding and funding levels, which we will do later --

HARLOW: But we don't have all day. MATTINGLY: -- because people will probably be mad at me.

What kind of impact tangibly will this actually have -- this threat?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, he's arguing that he could grind this nomination process to a halt. But the reality, Phil, as you know, is that he can really only slow it down. He does not have the power as one senator to block nominees forever. Instead, what he can do is force Senate leaders to burn valuable time on the Senate floor.

Usually, you can fast-track a nomination if you have agreement from all 100 senators. All J.D. Vance is saying here is that they no longer are going to have his agreement.

Now, it's important to note there are only currently two nominees in the pipeline so that gives you a sense that even if you have to burn all of your time for each of those nominees, that's probably about two weeks on the Senate floor, Phil. So it's not a considerable amount of time at this point.

Juxtapose that to the hold that Tommy Tuberville has right now on all Pentagon nominees and those promotions. That's 250 people waiting in the pipeline. If you were to put those on the floor you would burn through considerable amounts of time. And typically, those are not controversial, right, so that's the big difference here between what we're seeing from Tommy Tuberville when it comes to Pentagon promotions and what you're seeing here in J.D. Vance's statement.

[07:45:02]

But this is part of a much broader effort to push back on the indictment against former President Donald Trump.

And Democrats are arguing it is a political move. Here is Dick Durbin, who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate.

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SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): If you're in favor of law enforcement and the administration of justice then not filling vacancies of judges doesn't help at all. It's very transparent and I think this is a political reaction to the arraignment of the former president.

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FOX: And over in the House of Representatives there's even more actions being taken. A lot of Republicans calling to defund the special counsel's office. There are other calls to defund a new FBI building.

So that process on the appropriations side is going to take place in the House. But we should always note that the House can do what they want in their chamber. Once it goes to the Senate, which Democrats control, that has no chance of passing -- Phil, Poppy.

MATTINGLY: This is why I always text Lauren. She, like, makes me smarter and contextualize --

HARLOW: I always text her.

MATTINGLY: -- things -- what matters.

HARLOW: This is true. And then I ask her how Luca is and tell her how my Luca is. We have little boys.

FOX: Any time. I'll talk about my Luca any time.

HARLOW: Thank you --

MATTINGLY: I'm trying to one-up you.

HARLOW: -- Lauren. Let's open this up.

MATTINGLY: Thanks, Fox.

HARLOW: Guys, what do you make of this, Sara? Obviously, making a statement -- J.D. Vance. The Tuberville thing is more consequential in terms of how many people it would hold up.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It is. Look, I mean, the reason that J.D. Vance is where he is today is because of Donald Trump's endorsement, so I don't think it's totally --

HARLOW: That's right.

MURRAY: Yes. I don't think it's such a surprise to see that he would be one of the people who is not only out there vocally supporting Donald Trump but willing to make, you know, some sort of show about how he's doing it.

I think what's been more striking to me is to hear some of these reservations that have begun to emerge from some members of Donald Trump's own party over the last day or so as people start to get more in the weeds of what they're learning in this indictment.

SHELBY TALCOTT, POLITICS REPORTER, SEMAFOR: And I think to add to that, Trump's team is keeping an eye on who is saying what. Who is supporting him. They told us last night as much that he keeps track of it but so do they. And so that's notable because some of these lawmakers have -- Trump has such a hold on them and so it's understandable in some way that they feel kind of obligated almost to defend him in this way.

And I think that's interesting from a broader perspective because it's representative of Congress as a whole on the Republican side -- kind of this faction of the party who is so tied to Donald Trump because they feel like they owe him their success almost, in a way.

MATTINGLY: Tommy Tuberville was in Bedminster --

TALCOTT: Yes.

MATTINGLY: -- last night and missed a vote -- TALCOTT: Yes.

HARLOW: Oh, really?

MATTINGLY: -- that we should have expected him to be at -- so he could get to Bedminster.

TALCOTT: And that's notable as well --

HARLOW: Yes.

TALCOTT: -- of course.

HARLOW: Thank you, guys, very much. Appreciate it.

Report cards are out -- not for students. We're getting new data this morning on how children across the country graded their schools.

MATTINGLY: And this morning, more than 45 million people across the south are under a severe storm threat. This stretches from Texas to Georgia. The Storm Prediction Center says there could be large hail, wind gusts, and a couple of strong tornadoes. Our weather team is tracking this system. Stay with us.

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[07:51:24]

MATTINGLY: Welcome back.

A Mississippi police officer who shot an 11-year-old boy after the child called 911 for help has now been suspended without pay. The Indianola Board of Aldermen voted to suspend Sgt. Greg Capers after he shot Aderrien Murry in the chest while responding to a domestic disturbance call at the child's home.

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ADERRIEN MURRAY, 11-YEAR-OLD BOY SHOT BY POLICE: And he said everybody come out with your hands up. I -- then I came on inside the living room. But then I remember I heard the big bang.

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MATTINGLY: That boy's mother says he suffered a collapsed lung, fractured ribs, and a lacerated liver. She's seeking the officer's termination, charges against him, and suing for $5 million.

Sgt. Capers is set to appear for a probable cause hearing this fall. The shooting captured on the officer's bodycam remains under investigation.

HARLOW: Also new this morning, students across the country turning the tables and grading their schools. Just hours ago, Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation released a poll of fifth through 12th graders. Our national correspondent Athena Jones is here on it. Wow, this --

I've never heard of this.

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No, this is the first time they've done a survey like this and they say they're going to keep doing it. They're going to do it year-over-year to be able to track these indicators and see if there is any improvement. And they argue that there is room for improvement. The survey shows there is and shows that students are overwhelmingly very neutral about how they feel about their schools.

Mediocre is the word that the Gallup representative spoke about that I talked to. She said that schools get like an overall grade of a B-. Two-thirds of students gave their schools an A or a B, but almost a quarter gave them a C.

So, some of that might have to do with the fact that they are not impressed by the teaching quality. That's another area that got a low rating.

When it comes to mental health and supporting students' mental health, schools got an average of a C+. So not so great there. Just 22 percent gave it an A.

And this Gallup representative talked about a rising tide of unhappiness that's affecting people of all ages. They're seeing it in adults and in children, exacerbated by COVID.

And when it comes to feeling excited about learning, schools -- kids gave their schools a C+ as well, and that is, of course, not what we want. We want kids to be excited to go to school each day. It's basically their job and we want them --

HARLOW: Yes.

JONES: -- to be excited about going to their job each day to learn.

So those are some of the grades that they shared.

MATTINGLY: Can I ask -- I think the obvious question in something like this is what about physical safety? It's everywhere. We see it constantly. What are kids saying about that?

JONES: This is much in the news, right, because of gun violence at schools. This is where schools got the best grades. They got the best grades on safety -- making kids feel safe and making them feel respected regardless of their race or ethnicity. So on the safety grade, schools got an average of a B. Forty-three percent gave their school an A.

One thing I should note is there is a difference when it comes to race on some of these measures. When it comes to students feeling safe, Black students were much less likely to say their schools made them feel safe --

HARLOW: Really? JONES: -- and made them feel respected regardless of race or ethnicity and that sort of thing.

Only a third of Black students gave their schools an A on respecting them for who they are regardless of their race or ethnicity.

And then when it comes to feeling included, schools -- students gave schools a B- average.

So again, room for improvement here.

HARLOW: Yes.

JONES: And the Gallup representative I talked to really focused on the mental health side of things --

MATTINGLY: Yes.

JONES: -- and saying that schools need to do better and communities need to do better in building resilient students who don't reach a crisis point. They're able to kind of handle some of the challenges they face before they have an outburst of any sort.

HARLOW: That was so interesting.

JONES: It really is. They're going to keep doing this and so it will be interesting to see how it changes --

MATTINGLY: Yes, to set the baseline and then build from it.

[07:55:00]

JONES: -- over the years.

MATTINGLY: Yes.

JONES: Does the quality of teaching improve, according to these students, and that sort of thing.

HARLOW: Do the schools get to know how they were graded by their students?

JONES: This is a -- this is a massive survey, so it's nationwide. We're talking about -- the survey itself was 12- to 25-

HARLOW: Yes.

JONES: -- year-olds but they, of course, focus on 12 to 18 for the schools. So we're talking about more than 2,000 responses.

They did not break down for us --

HARLOW: With the school.

JONES: -- on an individual basis. But as an overall picture, it's pretty telling. I think B- -- mediocre -- blase is another word she used. You want kids to be a lot more than that. You don't want them to be blase about school.

COATES: Well, first of all, next year they have to feed them sweets before they take the survey --

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST, FORMER FEDERAL AND NEW JERSEY STATE PROSECUTOR: Yes.

COATES: -- and that's the key.

HONIG: That's bribery.

COATES: But -- yes, bribery.

MATTINGLY: Increases excitement.

COATES: They key -- but, you know, I remember -- my son is only 10 years old, my daughter is nine. And I remember they had sort of a survey at the school about whether they felt supported --

HARLOW: Oh, that's good.

COATES: -- and to help them beyond. I was surprised by the findings and that my son said things like he didn't feel always supported and --

HARLOW: Yes.

COATES: -- singled out. And I thought this is the moment for a conversation and it prompted me as a parent to do better.

JONES: It's great to hear from the kids.

HARLOW: Super (INAUDIBLE).

MATTINGLY: And it's constructive criticism.

HONIG: Where was this 40 years ago? I would have had some things to say.

COATES: It was nowhere.

HONIG: Yes.

HARLOW: Elie, you did just fine in school.

MATTINGLY: They didn't ask us -- they didn't ask us our opinion. I think you're doing OK. Whatever you were doing it worked out for you.

HONIG: (INAUDIBLE).

HARLOW: Thanks, you guys.

MATTINGLY: We've got to go, guys. Athena, that's great reporting. Thanks so much.

HARLOW: Yes, thank you. MATTINGLY: All right, former President Trump had a lot to say after he was arrested and arraigned the second time.

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DONALD TRUMP, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The Espionage Act has been used to go after traitors and spies. It has nothing to do with a former president legally keeping his own documents.

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MATTINGLY: Yes, we're going to be fact-checking those claims and more ahead. Stay with us.

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REP. TIM BURCHETT (R-TN): And I have serious concerns about anybody that has a reckless disregard for the handling of classified documents.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You were a military guy. He allegedly had national security information.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW (R-TX): I know. It's very problematic. There's a reason I'm not defending it.

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