← Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta
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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to chasing life. You know, I really enjoy hearing from all of you, all your concerns and your comments and your questions. But it's pained me recently to hear so many of you sad and confused about these so called Alzheimer's cures. That said, many of you have been smart enough to raise a skeptical eyebrow and give us a call. Hi Dr. Gupta. I just heard you talk about memory, Alzheimer's, dementia, and I ordered six bottles and now I've gotten a call wanting me to buy 18 months of supplements and it would be a fortune. I'm frightened that I'm going to be taken advantage of and this is a scam. Many of you have left me messages asking about videos that are circulating around the Internet using my name and my likeness. I want to say that this is truly a landmark in modern medicine and I am honored to be a part of it. Today, new hope is born. Only that is not really me. What you just heard was an AI generated deepfake that I have absolutely nothing to do with. Let me be clear. That infomercial you just heard is totally fake and it's only designed to scam you out of your money. It goes to show how misinformation not only causes harm in real time, but can also create a harmful ripple wave of distrust. So to try and put an end to the confusion once and for all, I'm gonna put myself in the guest seat.
- [01:36]
B
I'm here today with a special guest, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. He really needs no introduction, but we'll give him1.
- [01:43]
A
Recently, CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy invited me on to Terms of Service. That's the podcast she hosts here at cnn. She tries to explain technology in a way that'll help you make sure that you're not getting played by it. In our conversation, she asks me about my experience as a victim of this AI dupe, or Sanjay Dupta you could call it. We also answer the larger questions at hand, which is in an age of highly realistic AI generated content, how do we really distinguish the facts from the increasingly believable fiction? I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the real one, and this is chasing life.
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B
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A
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- [03:36]
B
Doctor Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much for doing this.
- [03:38]
A
What a pleasure, Clara, thanks for having me. I'm a big fan of your podcast.
- [03:41]
B
Well, thank you. It's same to you. So the medical misinformation issue really hit home for you recently. You became the subject of an AI deepfake along with our colleague Anderson Cooper that was trying to basically sell a fake product. Will you just tell us what happened here and how you found out about it?
- [04:01]
A
Yeah, you know, the way that I found out about it was I started getting emails, some of them initially from people that I knew, some of them who were friends of my parents, mostly people who were a little bit older, I would say, at least in their 60s and 70s. And they were starting to ask me if these were legitimate products. That was basically it. So I would ask them to send me whatever it was that they were seeing and started to see significant number of these videos where it very much looked like me, very much sounded like me, and I was selling products. Now this has happened to me for years for various products, like more than a decade where I've had these fake ads. I think what was sort of different this time around was just the quality of these ads in the past. I think it was really, if you spent a half a beat sort of thinking about it, you realize that that wasn't me and it wasn't, you know, sometimes there wasn't even pictures or sound. But this was really quite stunning. And you know, again, it was my, either friends or friends of my parents. So people that I knew and who knew me and yet they were still sort of duped by this. And that's, I think, what really got my attention.
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B
And in the time that you've been doing this, how have you seen the Internet change the way that people look for information about health and medicine?
- [05:27]
A
Completely, it has completely changed. You know, when I started, it was a time when every now and then people would go online to look for things. Mostly they were getting things, if they weren't getting it from their doctors or their nurses, it was from newspapers and magazines. And that's where a lot of that content came from. And now I think it's almost the opposite. There's much more about this online.
- [05:50]
B
Yeah, it's so interesting because I feel like when we think about people finding health information online, at least my brain often goes to this sort of negative place of like, oh, the dangers of going to WebMD or Google and going down the sort of spiral of anxiety. But to your point, so much more information is now available and at people's fingertips in a way that you may have had to put in a bit more effort to seek that out pre. So it does seem positive in a lot of ways too.
- [06:17]
A
You know, it's an interesting point, Claire. I think that there were a lot of physicians and nurses sort of lamenting the rise of WebMD, because then the problem was, look, are people being overwhelmed with information and not having an easy time sort of digesting it or prioritizing it or making sense of it? But as a general rule back then, you still believed that the information was true. It just was a question. Was it relevant to you and to your situation? So if you had headaches and you immediately thought that you might have a brain tumor because of going online, that's obviously not good. But the information you were getting about brain tumors was probably accurate. It just wasn't relevant to you. What is so striking to me now is that, and I've seen this myself personally, stuff that shows up in my feed that is demonstrably, objectively not true, and yet it is there and it is shared over and over and over again. So nowadays it seems like the currency is to click bait and to clickbait. Putting out things that are demonstrably not true has become very, very normal.
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B
Yeah, talk a bit more about that and sort of how we're starting to see false claims about health and medicine show up where we see them. What kinds of claims are being made?
- [07:43]
A
So, first of all, just over half, I think 55% of adults say they are now using social media to find health information and advice. That's extraordinary. I mean, you know, think about in 2005, smartphones were just coming out. So 20 years later, more than half of adults are using social media. That's pretty remarkable. I think the ones that are the most egregious in terms of not being trustworthy or just flat out misinformation are things that are trying to sell you something. It totally makes sense. Fundamentally, I think this is still all about money and how people are monetizing that. I think what has been confusing for people is I don't quite understand how this is being monetized by gathering my attention to look at a product online. Obviously, if you buy the product, you're monetizing it, but just people's attention to the product was also being monetized, as someone said to me. And by the way, I have three teenage daughters, so I have lived with this through their eyes as well. But they said, if you're not buying a product, you are the product. So it's the things that are designed to be highly engaging. And when you listen to scientists talk and physicians talk, they usually talk with the nuance they want to explain the entirety of the matter, as opposed to saying, this will cure your type 2 diabetes today. This will reverse your Alzheimer's disease today. So that kind of stuff, I think right away kind of raises red flags. But wild claims and selling you something, that's the type of misinformation and the reason, I think, why that misinformation is money.
- [09:28]
B
Yeah, it's so true. It's come up in a number of different ways on this show. Just the way that people gain influence and then make money online by posting things that are scary or enraging or whatever it is that makes that content engaging, Just the act of doing that and getting people to watch it can be a money maker.
- [09:49]
A
And I will tell you what has really, I think, been a bit jarring for me is that again, going back to this earlier thing that how good these AI fakes are. I was walking through Ann Arbor this past weekend with my daughter. It was parents weekend, and. And I went to Michigan myself. So there are people who I had known there. And one of my old professors, somebody I hadn't seen in 30 years, walked up to me and he exchanged pleasantries and this, that and the other thing, and he said to me, almost as an afterthought, hey, by the way, I bought some of those type 2 diabetes products I heard you talking about.
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B
Wow. Oh, no.
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A
So this is a guy who, clearly very engaged person, no science, He's a doctor, he taught me surgery.
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B
And.
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A
And even he was fooled by these products online. And I'm sure at some point you're going to want to ask, like, what can we do about this? But I'm not sure exactly right now because it has penetrated so deeply. And this is somebody who knows me. So he was able to come up to me and talk to me. But some of these videos, when I look at the View, count on these videos that I'm featured in selling A product they've been seen 35 million times.
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B
Gosh.
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A
So if 1% of the people who saw that video bought a product, you're talking hundreds of Thousands of people, 350,000 people.
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B
Yeah. I was going to ask sort of how AI has changed the landscape of health and medical information online. And it strikes me that one of the challenges is that maybe before you're scrolling through your feed and you see a random person hawking a product and you think twice about it, but when people can use AI to take trusted figures like yourself to create this misinformation, that's like a whole new ball game.
- [11:38]
A
It is. And I look at these videos myself, and I can definitely tell right away it's not me. But it has completely changed the landscape. Again, in the past, I think people did use the name and maybe even the likeness of somebody, so you might see their name and might see a picture of somebody. But now you hear them talking, and now you hear them even answering questions. So how does this type of honey Cure your type 2 diabetes? Well, let me tell you something. I've traveled all over the world looking for this honey, and I found these tribes. And, you know, it sometimes it sort of piggybacks off some of the work that I've done, because I have traveled all over the world looking at ways of life for people where people live extraordinarily long lives. And I think it sort of hijacks some of your identity and then layers in almost always the selling of a product.
- [12:31]
B
Have you seen this showing up in your own practice? Like patients coming in and asking about things that they've seen online that are just. Absolutely.
- [12:40]
A
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I was in clinic the other day, and people were asking me about these products online. And, you know, I think because I'm a neurosurgeon, a lot of the products are sort of designed around neuro products. Alzheimer's disease, brain tumors, things like that. And I think what, again, with a lot of these things, there's a kernel of truth to it. So I've written a book all about Alzheimer's disease. I've done a lot of reporting on this. So I think that they take some of what you have said legitimately and then greatly, greatly extrapolate and amplify their own sort of product selling through that. I think the ones that scare me the most were kind of like this thing that happened with my professor where it wasn't a. Hey, by the way, this thing looked a little fishy to me. Is that really you? It was presupposed that this was accurate. So there's probably a term for this that you may know that I don't know. When something penetrates so deeply, it's not even a question anymore in the minds of these folks whether whether it's accurate or not. It's just a question of, do I bring it up with the person, not because I question the veracity of it, but just because I just want to let them know, hey, I bought your product type thing.
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B
Yeah. How does that make you feel? That's got to be so enraging or upsetting. I don't know.
- [13:56]
A
I don't know that it's enraging as much as I'm not sure what to do exactly. Maybe we have to count on technology companies to create verification techniques. So, like, if you see a video, you know it's watermarked in some way or something. I don't know. I know that every time I've done interviews with people about this, I realize it's very hard to do at scale, but if you had a video and you wanted to know if it was legit, could you put it through some sort of screener? So, hey, this is a fake, you know, I don't know. But is everyone actually going to do that? I mean, we're talking about billions and billions of videos out there, so can that actually be done? So I'm hopeful that it gets to the point where people will demand that. I know my professor, the one I was talking about that I saw in Ann Arbor, he was very upset by this. And he happens to be someone who's a very influential figure in academics. So I think the more this sort of happens to people who are influential, maybe there's some change. But I will tell you, his primary sentiment, once I told them that was definitively not me, was a sense of embarrassment, like, how did I get duped? How did I get fooled by this? And I don't want to embarrass people. That's not the intent. But they should know that these videos are getting better and better, audio and video.
- [15:23]
B
Why do you think it is that medical misinformation spreads so easily online? Whether it's AI or the sort of, the more traditional false claims that we've seen?
- [15:33]
A
You know, I think there's an intimacy to medical information. Much of when you watch these videos, it is designed to be emotional. It's designed to tug on your heartstrings. It's almost designed to make you feel like you're not doing enough for yourself or your loved ones. If you aren't buying the product or paying attention to these false videos. Wouldn't you want to do everything you can for your mom with Alzheimer's disease? Why not just buy this honey product? Just $100? It's so enticing in that way. And it's particularly, I find reprehensible because you are preying on people at a very vulnerable time in their lives and taking their money, number one. Number two, again, potentially harming them. I have no idea what's in these products. I'm hoping and assuming they're at least inert, meaning they don't do anything to you, good or bad. But who knows? When you're dealing with reprehensible people, I don't think anything's off the table in terms of what might happen, sort of.
- [16:34]
B
On that note, you wrote in your book World War C about how disinformation spread during the COVID 19 pandemic. In 2021, you went on Joe Rogan's podcast to debunk false claims. What did you learn about medical misinformation from that experience?
- [16:51]
A
You know, I think that the biggest thing I learned, and this was a while ago at a time when, you know, I knew about medical misinformation. Obviously I knew it was out there, but I don't think I fully appreciated the scope of it. So I think what I learned is when you're having a conversation with somebody about something, whatever it might be, new blood pressure guidelines, vaccines, you know, Chagas disease, whatever it might be, there is probably already a lot of misinformation that people have been exposed to, even as you're sort of entering the conversation. And oftentimes that presentation of the misinformation is very, very clear. This will kill you. This will harm you. This is not good for you, whatever it might be, take this instead. This is what's better for you. So there's no nuance to it. And a lot of times I think what's been striking is that the misinformation is often cloaked in what seem like legitimate studies. So he so why are there 20 studies saying that, you know, Shogas disease isn't a real thing? And you as a medical person say, well, 20 studies. Well, let me be a reasonable person, look at these 20 studies. But that takes time. And then you come to find out that those 20 studies are bogus. Some of them don't even exist. We saw that recently, even with the Maha report, you may remember, is that it was a very thick, very impressive looking report. I think very few people Single digit percentage of people will actually dig into the citations in a report like that. But I think as journalists, we did. And we found that some of those studies that were cited as evidence didn't even exist, let alone misinterpreted. They didn't even exist. We called the names of study authors saying, hey, your name is being used on a study. And they're saying, we never wrote a study like that. That study doesn't exist. But by that point it's already out there. And people who want to believe will say, so how do you explain thousands of studies that say X, Y or Z? And am I going to, as a reporter, be able to sort of vet through all thousand studies, some of which may not even exist?
- [19:01]
B
What does it mean for all of us? I mean, for the medical field as doctors, but also sort of just for public health, when this kinds of medical misinformation spreads online and there is this sort of lack of ability to believe what you're seeing when it comes to something that's so important?
- [19:20]
A
I think all content, even good content, ultimately gets tainted by this. That's the problem. Now, to be fair, there's a lot of really good content out there online. People spend a lot of time certainly in the medical area, public health area, making great content. And they're highly engaging people. They do it in a way that's very understandable for the listener or user, and yet that gets lumped into everything else. And I think that that's just too bad. And it's the elderly people and young people in particular who are really, really vulnerable to this. I think I read a statistic that said 35% of people between the ages of 13 and 23 say they have been deceived now online by some sort of misinformation. Third, and these are native digital users, I don't know what the stats are for people over the age of 65, but my guess, it's even higher, right? I think everything, at least for the time being, unless we can have some reasonable regulation around this, everything gets tainted. Nobody believes anything, everybody's suspicious of each other. And unless you can touch the person or talk to them directly, they are also suspect because it could be an AI impersonator. Okay, so how are you holding up so far? When we come back, we're going to help you refine your own eye for true and false health information. Oh, Hilton, stay, oh Hilton, stay. Your beds are soft and cozy. No lumpy couch, no stiff futon, no shower line at crack of dawn.
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B
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- [21:57]
B
Are there red flags? I mean, we've touched on this a little bit, but are there red flags that you think that people should look out for that might indicate medical information online is false or exaggerated?
- [22:08]
A
Well, first of all, I think just having more conversations like this where people, it just registers on their radar as a starting point that maybe what I'm looking at is not real. Because I think for a lot of people who did not grow up in a world of AI, myself included, that's not where your head first goes. I think for younger people, it may be, hey, before I dive into this too much, am I even looking at something real here? But I think when it comes to medical stuff, I think there's a couple of golden rules in terms of trying to understand if it's misinformation. One is a basic one. If it sounds too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true. That's the thing. Another one is that I think most medical professionals who are trying to do right by you will not speak in absolutes. They're not going to say all or nothing sort of statement. So someone is presenting something as a this is a cure all or this is going to kill you. It's rarely that simple in either direction in terms of harm or benefit. If it's overly appealing to your emotions, wouldn't you want to do this for your mom? You're going to deny your mom cure for her Alzheimer's disease, that type of stuff, that's a red flag. And obviously the sales pitch, if at the end, like in the video that I think got a lot of attention, tens of millions of views, not only was it sales, and it was really long, by the way, it was like over 20 minutes long. It was a sales pitch at the end, like, buy these bottles. And then like a minute later it said, by the way, if you're still watching this video right now, I'll give you another two bottles for this discounted price. So it was like selling People, five bottles of something right out of the gate for hundreds of dollars, by the way. They never received their products. Their money was taken. They're upset. I get lots of angry letters. I have a standard sort of response now that I've created a very empathetic response, including a video that I made basically showing how these AI fakes get made. And I send that out to folks and usually I get some version of the same response which is, God, how did I fall for that? I'm so dumb. I'm so stupid. I'm so embarrassed. Which again, I don't want people to feel that way because this is happening a lot. But I think also if you watch the videos carefully, you can usually see something that doesn't feel right about the video, something that seems off about the audio or the video, the visual parts of it, just something, lots of background changes. I've just learned all this because I've been talking to experts about this when this started happening to me regularly. I think those types of things will help for the time being. Buyer beware for sure. But I think it's going to need to be something bigger than that in order to address what I think is a really, really terrible and increasing problem.
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B
Yeah, sort of. On the flip side, do you have advice about how people can find good information online?
- [25:12]
A
Yeah, you know, that's the other thing. Just related to the previous question, and this question is if there is something that is wildly successful, something that's going to be a real benefit for people, seek out other sources. That's what I would say. If you're just finding it on your social media feed and that's it, you're not seeing it anywhere else. Certainly as a reporter, if I had something that was remarkably beneficial to people, I'd probably be talking about it with people like you and on CNN.com so if you can't find evidence of this elsewhere, then, and I think that's a red flag. But to find good information, I think you do have to find your trusted sources and you have to go to the source yourself. Because even as I learned recently, even on social media feed, you may be taken to a sort ofmimic of CNN.com as happened to mine, it had CNN branding on it. If you looked at the URL, it had CNN in it even though it wasn't CNN.com specifically. So just find the sources that you like and go to them directly. So type it in yourself as opposed to being redirected there.
- [26:24]
B
Well, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much. This is obviously such an important conversation, so I really appreciate it.
- [26:30]
A
Thank you. Thanks for having me. That was my conversation with CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy from a recent episode of her own CNN podcast, Terms of Service. You know, Claire is really great at helping you and me learn how to best navigate our tech world. And these days, keeping yourself informed and protected online, I think that's another way to chase life. It really is. Look, I hate that harmful misinformation caused our paths to cross, but I'm thankful that Claire gave me the space to clear up a bad case of an artificial intelligence scam. Thanks so much for listening. And until next week, keep chasing life.
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B
Life. It's finally cool enough to wear my favorite sweater. So I'm walking through the park, sipping on chai and listening to the assignment with Audie Cornish. Now I know what you look like. Maybe I don't get those anymore. I don't get those anymore. Which has been a real boon to the black community, Let me tell you, she's a much better conversationalist than my dog, Sparkles. No offense to him. I love that I can just catch fall vibes while also getting caught up with what's going on. Like with CNN. One thing.
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B
Follow the assignment and CNN. One thing.
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A
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