Sam Gregory

Activist, Brainstormer, Change agent, Connector, Educator/Teacher, Gay, Idea generator, Inventor, Technologist

Sam Gregory is an internationally recognized human rights advocate and technologist. He helps ensure we are better prepared globally for deepfakes, synthetic media and deceptive generative AI. He has testified to both Houses of the US Congress on AI and synthetic media, and is a TED speaker on proactive, human rights-based responses to deceptive AI. As Executive Director of WITNESS, he leads their strategic plan to "Fortify the Truth" and champions their global team who support millions of people using video and technology for human rights. With over twenty years of experience in the opportunities and challenges of video and technology for human rights work, smartphone witnessing and diverse civic journalism, he is an expert on innovations in preserving trust, authenticity and evidence in an era of increasingly complex audiovisual communication and deception. In 2018, he initiated WITNESS’ "Prepare, Don’t Panic" initiative (gen-ai.witness.org) around deepfakes and multimodal generative AI - the first globally focused effort to ground these technologies in realities of frontline journalists and human rights defenders and which has directly influenced platform policies, emerging technologies for trust such as the C2PA, legislative efforts and public discussion of who and what to prioritize. Sam served on the ICC Technology Advisory Board, co-chaired the Partnership on AI’s Expert Group on AI and the Media and led the Threats and Harms Taskforce of a leading coalition to develop standards for media provenance (C2PA). He is frequently interviewed by major media on the threats of deepfakes and generative AI, and has written for WIRED, The Hill and a range of academic journals. Recently he published ‘Fortify the Truth: How to Defend Human Rights in an Age of Deepfakes and Generative AI?’ in the Journal of Human Rights Practice. He taught the first course at Harvard on participatory media and human rights from 2010-18.

Preparing better for deepfakes and deceptive AI - doing that by centering the critical frontline defenders of truth in our increasingly complex synthetic media world and amid surging human rights crises

There is still time to prepare and an obligation not to panic around how deepfakes and deceptive AI impact our elections, democracies and societies - but we have to listen to the right people and choose the right solutions to do that. We need to 'fortify the truth' not just confront lies and deception.

advocacy, deceptive AI, deepfakes, foresight, generative AI, human rights, technology, video

I most recently spoke at TED Democracy about how we prepare better for deepfakes.