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May 19, 2025 • 16 mins

This episode we discover how easily AI can now create convincing fake videos of well-known figures, complete with realistic voice synthesis that fooled even our resident voice recognition expert.

  • Spotting the telltale signs of AI-generated content through pronunciation errors and unlinked content
  • How social media platforms lack incentive to remove fake content while Google prioritizes trustworthiness
  • Understanding Google's E-E-A-T framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) for ranking websites
  • Practical ways to improve your website's trustworthiness through testimonials, author pages, and external links
  • The concerning ease and affordability of creating convincing AI voice content
  • Why establishing genuine trust signals is becoming essential in the age of synthetic media

If you want to hear a fuller episode about how to improve your website's E-E-A-T signals, like our Instagram post linked below.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DJ2dVEYAYBH/

---
Meredith's Husband
https://www.meredithshusband.com

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Meredith's husband (00:00):
Recently, we , you and I both or actually I
found it, but I sent it to youand we both watched some videos
on YouTube which we thought werereally great, because they
talked about something that isof a lot of interest to us right
now, and the videos werebasically just or at least I
thought they were snippets takenfrom a speech that a very

(00:22):
well-known psychologist wasgiving.
I won't name the person, itdoesn't really matter.
In watching the video, itseemed to me and one of the
skills actually, I won't call ita skill, because a skill
implies that it was developedbut a weird ability that I seem
to have is to recognize voices.

Meredith (00:41):
Yeah, you are incredible with voices.

Meredith's husband (00:43):
Has provided absolutely no value in my life
at all, but I seem to be reallygood at it.

Meredith (00:49):
You're really good at it.

Meredith's husband (00:51):
And so in watching this video, I could
tell that this person I knowthis person.
I don't follow them, but I knowthem well enough to know their
voice.

Meredith (00:59):
Yeah, I should say I don't know them at all Right,
but I have listened to themenough to know their voice.
You are familiar with theirvoice.
Yes, I know their voice.

Meredith's husband (01:06):
This was their voice, as far as I could
tell, but it sounded like it wasspeeded up somehow.
It sounded like the pauses hadbeen removed, so he was just
straight talking for like 30minutes.
And it's best to note that thevideo was a still image with
some, you know, like a littlebit of stuff going on over it

(01:28):
yeah, which is which you'reright is kind of a red flag but,
also not totally uncommon.

Meredith (01:33):
Not necessarily.

Meredith's husband (01:34):
Yeah, but anyway.
So I did a little bit ofresearch because I wanted to see
where that was coming from,because I thought it had.
I thought maybe what washappening was either it was sped
up just to make it seem moreexciting, which people do
Sometimes.
I know this as a podcaster.
This is not sped up.

Meredith (01:52):
Oh no, Although there is One listener who does listen
to it at 1.25.

Meredith's husband (01:56):
Yeah, I have been.
No, it's 1.21.
I've been told that I can belistened to at speed 1.21
exactly, and it doesn't soundlike I have been sped up.
But, our episodes are like 10minutes long.
I know Really.

Meredith (02:10):
Yes, yes, yes, people need to do whatever they need to
do.

Meredith's husband (02:14):
Anyway, I thought that this had been sped
up.
I did a little bit of researchon it because I thought it was
taken from an actual speech thatthis person gave, and so it
turns out no, completely fake,completely false.
This person has never, ever,talked about the subject that we
listened to, which wassurprising, because it was

(02:36):
really good, yeah, and it reallysounded like the arguments that
he would use to me.
Like I said, I've listened tohim before and it was like, yeah
, that's totally what he wouldsay or what I would expect.

Meredith (02:49):
He would say but no, do you know what's interesting
Is?
I Googled this person and thesubject they were talking about.
Yes, so did I, and I couldn'tfind anything.

Meredith's husband (02:58):
Right, right , you've nailed the point today.

Meredith (03:02):
I did yet again.

Meredith's husband (03:04):
So for Google, there is an incentive to
not put fake results in theirresults.
For social, there is noincentive for that.
In fact, it's almost theopposite they're just creating
more views and people arespending more time.
It's almost the oppositethey're just creating more views
and people are spending moretime.
And I read a really interestingarticle about this a few years
ago.
How you know social mediaplatforms like Instagram,

(03:25):
facebook, youtube, all thesethings they have rules that say
you know, you're not supposed toput up, you're not supposed to
create fake accounts.

Meredith (03:33):
Right.

Meredith's husband (03:33):
Tons and tons of people do, and this I
think it cited some people whoused to work at one of those
platforms and they haveabsolutely zero incentive to
crack down on that.
It's just a rule they put upfor, like to make you know, to
say like hey, to make peoplepeep.
To make people peep To makepeople peel safe.

(03:53):
Yes, exactly.

Meredith (03:55):
And that they're not wasting their time on false
information.

Meredith's husband (03:59):
Right, yeah, so social media, including
YouTube, which is owned byGoogle, but it's still social
media there isn't really noincentive.
There is incentive for Google,like I said In fact, that's how
I did my research is, I went toGoogle, same with you.
We went to Google and we foundout all that stuff was fake.
I found tons of other of thosesimilar videos Really Tons of
them.
Several different channels alldoing the was fake.
I found tons of other of thosesimilar videos really tons of
them, several different channelsall doing the same thing.

Meredith (04:22):
And the thing that tripped me was I thought it
sounded a little it just therewas something that was off.
But at one point the speakersaid what's important is to live
Like you you know, and hemispronounced live.
And then, yeah, it was live.
Yeah, and I thought andsimilarly there he.

Meredith's husband (04:43):
In some point during the video he
referenced carl jung yes and hesaid john, I'm like well, as a,
as a psychologist, he's gonnaknow how to pronounce young.
Yeah, um, and that was that's.
That's kind of why I then wentand did the research.
In doing that research, I wenta little deeper after finding
out that this was false and likehow easy is it to create stuff

(05:05):
like that?
Well, it turns out it's veryeasy.
It is extremely easy.
So there are websites that youjust go to and you can pick a
celebrity, a huge list ofcelebrities, and they'll say
anything that you want.
And even for free you can dolike a one minute or something,
get out.
But if you sign up, okay, andthere were a lot of them.

Meredith (05:28):
Because Mel Robbins also has one where you see her
voice and I swear it's AI.
Yeah, I mean you hear her voiceand you just see a static
picture.

Meredith's husband (05:39):
Yes, and I thought I would be able to tell
with my weird voice ability.
I used to be able to, but withthese ones that I did just as a
test on these websites, Icouldn't tell Wow, I couldn't
tell they're really good,they're really easy, they're
really cheap, and so myexpectation is that content like

(06:00):
this is going to just explode.
I mean, it is already the factthat there's any of it, but like
this, the channel that I lookedup, as I said, they had
probably at least 50 differentvideos across three, four
different channels, getting Idon't know how many views, but
probably millions.

Meredith (06:21):
And they monetize that .

Meredith's husband (06:22):
Yes, and so they monetize it and there's no.
So I'll talk a little bit about, I guess, what some other
giveaways might be.
When you see a channel likethat, if there are no links to a
website, there are no links atall in the show notes, or there
are no show notes, or it justlinks back to the YouTube
channel and that's it, that isalso kind of, I think, a red

(06:43):
flag.

Meredith (06:43):
It's self-contained.

Meredith's husband (06:45):
And I'll tell you why, and this is also
why this is going to beimportant and what people can
take away from this and what youcan do to your own website.
So something that is reallyimportant to Google and it
really always has been, but evenmore so now in this age of
AI-generated content is whatthey call EAT, eat, e-a-t.

(07:07):
It's an acronym, it stands forwell, actually now it's E-E-A-T.
It used to be E-A-T and itstood for expertise,
authoritativeness andtrustworthiness.
Oh, wow.
And recently in, I think withinthe last two years-ish.

Meredith (07:22):
Electronic.

Meredith's husband (07:24):
No Experience, because experience,
I guess, is a little bitdifferent than expertise.
I kind of don't know why theydid that, because if you have
expertise, it seems like youcertainly are going to have
experience.

Meredith (07:35):
You certainly are going to have some experience.

Meredith's husband (07:38):
I certainly have experience.
You certainly are going to havesome experience.
I certainly have experience Icertainly hope.
So that is, and there's a littlebit of controversy around this,
because people are alwaystalking about what are the
ranking factors for Google?
What does Google look at todetermine its ranking?
And eat is a very important one, but it's not a specific thing
that you can do.
It's not like improving yourtitle tags.

(08:00):
It's more of a conceptual thing.
It's more of, I would call it,the goal of Google.
So it's important, but how youdo it?
There is some controversy, likewhat exactly does it mean?
And what Google has said aboutit is that the best way that you
can think about it is if youare a user, a visitor to a

(08:23):
website, what would make youtrust that website?
What would make you think thatthe person or the company
speaking has expertise,authoritativeness and
trustworthiness?
Authoritativeness andtrustworthiness whatever you
come up with, whatever wouldimprove your trust in that

(08:43):
company, that website.
That's what it is.
So that's been the answer.
So it's kind of a vague kind ofcircular, kind of argument.
It's kind of a half rule thathas many loopholes, but it is
very important, especially withthe rise of AI content, and the
reason that they, I think,started talking about this in
the first place was whenevaluating and trying to rank

(09:04):
websites that had to do withhealth, financial advice, like
things that could really reallyimpact a person's life.
Like if a website is going togive you false information about
health or your finances whichthere are websites that do this
but Google essentially theydon't want to promote those
websites, obviously, so this EATit was EAT then was really

(09:27):
important for those types ofsites.
Eat for my money is going tobecome increasingly important
nowadays also yeah, but how arethey going to differentiate?
So the question that most peoplehave about this is what does
that mean?
What can you do?
Now, it differs for like myclients versus a small business
owner like yourself.
Yeah, Okay.

(09:48):
So for clients it could bethings like links to external
articles that people havepublished, or university alumni
or awards, accreditations.
There are things for a smallbusiness owner.
Typically you're not going tohave those same options, but
along those lines you can thinkabout something as simple as

(10:10):
testimonials.
Testimonials are certainly asign of trustworthiness and
experience.
Now you can fake testimonials,but take the same approach.
Could you link to your Googlereview page?
You can't fake that, somethinglike that.

(10:31):
So, like I said, you kind ofhave to use your creativity in
how you are going to show this.
Something else, a very detailedor not very detailed, but your
about page is an opportunity.
Do you have articles you havepublished somewhere else?
Do you have anything like thatAlong the same lines, an author
page?
So you have a blog.

(10:52):
Whenever you write a blog, onany platform, it's going to keep
track of the authors ofindividual blog articles, right,
and usually it will link to theauthor of a blog.
It will be separate from yourabout page, like this happens on
WordPress Squarespace.
I would have also an authorpage and in the author page, you
know, can you list it?

(11:12):
Can you list where you went toschool or where you learned
photography, or do you have anyawards or anything?
So it's good to have an authorpage.
I think, in addition to yourabout page, you can get links,
like a link from a.
I will link to your site fromthis podcast.
A link from a podcast is veryvaluable Really.

(11:34):
Yes, because think about it, ofcourse, in order to have a link
from a podcast.
You got to have a podcast, soyou got to be somewhat serious
about whatever you're doing.
Yeah, if you're in, thatreminds me there are.
I didn't know this, but thereare tons and tons and tons and
tons of podcasts with only oneepisode.
Oh, yeah, and and probably someof those at least, was you

(11:56):
wanted to get a link from apodcast, because when you do a
podcast you have a link onSpotify, on Apple, on all these
different podcast platforms.

Meredith (12:05):
I thought you were going to say a lot of podcasts
are AI.

Meredith's husband (12:10):
Oh, not yet.

Meredith (12:11):
They will be.
How much do you want to bet?

Meredith's husband (12:16):
So a link from a podcast would be great.
Links to and from places whereyou volunteer those would be
hard to fake.
Link from your Google businessprofile to your social media
sites that's another giveaway isfake content like that.
They're not going to link toprobably a whole bunch of social

(12:37):
media sites.
That just means because theirwhole goal is to just set up
something and monetize it onYouTube.
They don't want to also have tocreate a realistic looking
profile on other sites.

Meredith (12:48):
So I'm also wondering whose speech was that AI saying?

Meredith's husband (12:54):
Well, it was probably based on stuff that
that person had actually said.
That's actually relatively easyto do Really.

Meredith (13:03):
Yes, they didn't just plug in somebody's other,
someone else's speech and haveit said in their voice.

Meredith's husband (13:11):
I don't think so, because then, well, we
could test that we could takesome of the speech and then
paste that into Google andfigure it out.
I don't think that was the case, though, because I'm just
interested in it.
Because some.
I'll tell you why.
Because because I checked,because I thought the same thing
there are, there are severaldifferent videos that are

(13:31):
identical in what they aresaying, but the words are all
different.
So I think it was.
It is based on something, and Iwill tell you.
There are AI tools where youcan just feed in a bunch of
anyone's podcast, including thisone, and say, okay, build a
model around the contents ofeverything this person has said.

Meredith (13:50):
And have it be voiced by Keanu.

Meredith's husband (13:53):
Yeah, no-transcript, but the tools

(14:26):
that are doing this so far areeither in beta and only released
to like really big influencers,podcasters, or they're pretty
expensive, so they're not orthey're not, or or they're not
expensive and they're also notvery good.
So, yeah, anyway.
So I thought that, like thisEAT concept is probably worth a

(14:47):
fuller, like a full episode ofthings you might want to do to
help prepare you for theonslaught of AI content, but I'm
curious what people would think, so I'm going to put a link
below to an Instagram post.
It's not fake, it's generatedby me, and if you do want to
hear a fuller episode about howto improve your EAT, then just

(15:10):
like that post.
So I know at least if nobodylikes it.

Meredith (15:14):
I'm not going to do it .
No, I'm not going to waste ourtime.

Meredith's husband (15:17):
I hope that helps.
Does that help yeah?
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