Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — The family of a Native American woman who has been missing since 2021 is hoping for answers and closure, their attorney said, as a suspect faces assault and carjacking charges in connection with her disappearance.
Ella Mae Begay was reported missing from her home near Sweetwater, Arizona, by family members on June 15, 2021, and has not been seen or heard from since, according to the FBI. Her Ford F-150 pick-up truck was seen leaving her residence that morning possibly heading toward New Mexico, authorities said.
This week, a New Mexico man was arrested in connection with Begay’s disappearance, the Department of Justice announced. Preston Henry Tolth, 23, appeared in federal court Friday in Flagstaff, Arizona, for an arraignment and detention hearing, following an indictment by a federal grand jury last month for assault resulting in serious bodily injury and carjacking resulting in serious bodily injury.
According to the indictment, Tolth is alleged to have assaulted Begay, then-62 years old, within the confines of the Navajo Indian Reservation on or about June 15, 2021, and then taken her Ford pick-up truck across state lines “by force, violence, and intimidation, resulting in serious bodily injury” to the victim, who is identified in the indictment by her initials.
A Department of Justice spokesperson did not comment further on the case in response to an ABC News inquiry.
“I think the hardest part for the family is knowing that their family member is out there and she’s still out there, and they just want to bring her home,” Darlene Gomez, an attorney for Begay’s family who attended Friday’s hearing, told ABC Albuquerque affiliate KOAT. “It’s incredibly, incredibly hard for them to listen to the details of how she became battered and left out in the middle of the reservation somewhere and that they cannot find her.”
“Her body needs to be found. This family needs closure,” Gomez told KOAT. “She needs to be put to rest in the proper way.”
ABC News did not receive a response from Tolth’s attorney to an email seeking comment.
A conviction for the assault charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a conviction for the carjacking charges carries a maximum of 25 years.
The investigation, which is part of the Department of Justice’s efforts to address cases involving missing and murdered indigenous persons, is ongoing, prosecutors said.
“This indictment is an important first step in determining the truth about what happened to an elderly victim on the Navajo Nation,” U.S. Attorney Gary Restaino said in a statement.
As of Oct. 11, 2022, more than 192 Native Americans have been verified as missing through New Mexico and the Navajo Nation, according to the FBI.
(WINONA, Minn.) — Nearly 2,000 volunteers turned out on Friday to help search rural terrain for any clues in the disappearance of a Minnesota mother who has been missing for a week under “suspicious” circumstances, authorities said.
Madeline Kingsbury, 26, of Winona, has been missing since March 31, police said. The mother of two did not show up to work that day and failed to pick up her children from day care that afternoon, which is “extremely out of character for her,” police said.
On Friday, more than 1,860 volunteers searched areas in Winona and about 24 miles south in Rushford, the Winona Police Department said.
“This is tough terrain, and we are grateful to the hundreds of volunteers who are taking their personal time to assist with the search,” Winona Police Chief Tom Williams said during a press briefing.
There are currently no suspects or persons of interest in the case, authorities said.
Williams said they have received hundreds of leads and that the investigation remains “incredibly active.”
“We are working relentlessly to find Maddi and determine the circumstances around her disappearance,” Williams said.
Kingsbury and her children’s father dropped the children off at a day care shortly after 8 a.m. on March 31 before returning to her home in Winona, according to Williams. The children’s father told police he left the house in Kingsbury’s van around 10 a.m., but when he returned later that day, Kingsbury was not there, Williams said at a press conference earlier this week.
There is no indication Kingsbury left home on foot or in another vehicle, and her cellphone, wallet and ID were found in the house, Williams said.
Williams declined on Friday to say whether the father of the children is participating in the search or clarify how he has been cooperating with authorities.
Authorities have called for volunteers to help with search efforts on Saturday.
(NEW YORK) — Several hot-button legal inquiries loom over former President Donald Trump — everything from election interference and misuse of classified documents to defamation of a writer after an alleged rape.
He has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
However, the indictment and arraignment of Trump earlier this week, the first for an ex-president in U.S. history, has drawn the nation’s attention to a rarely discussed white-collar financial crime: falsifying business records.
As part of a scheme to reimburse former Trump attorney Michael Cohen for hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels, Trump fraudulently recorded $130,000 in expenses as the cost of legal services for Cohen, the indictment alleges.
In Manhattan criminal court, Trump pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to all 34 counts of falsifying business records. He has denied having sex with Daniels.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg characterized the validity of business records as fundamental to a well-functioning economy.
“This is the business capital of the world,” he said. “The bedrock, in fact the basis, for business integrity and a well-functioning business marketplace is true and accurate record keeping.”
Here’s what to know about the crime of falsifying business records and the typical penalties, according to interviews with New York City-based criminal defense attorneys.
What does falsifying business records entail?
Falsifying business records, a violation of New York state law, constitutes the entry of inaccurate information on a business document to benefit oneself.
In other words, a description of the crime is “sort of in the name,” Adam Konta, a senior partner at Manhattan-based law firm Konta, Georges & Buza, told ABC News.
However, the crime of falsifying business records not only requires an incorrect entry on a company form but also an intent to mislead in an effort to reap reward.
“Every crime requires both an act and a criminal intent behind the act,” Matthew Galluzo, a criminal defense attorney in New York City and a former prosecutor in the New York County District Attorney’s Office, told ABC News.
If a boss asks a secretary to mark a form incorrectly and he or she does so without awareness of an attempt to mislead, the secretary is innocent of a crime, Galluzo said.
Similarly, an accidental or harmless recording error falls short of a crime, he added.
The most common example of the crime involves fibbing about a company’s financial information for the sake of evading or minimizing tax payments, or in an effort to hoodwink potential investors, Galluzo said.
Why is the alleged Trump crime a felony and how will prosecutors need to prove it?
The crime of falsifying business records constitutes either a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the circumstances of a given violation, the attorneys said.
The act rises to a felony when the inaccurate record is entered as part of an effort to commit a different, underlying crime, the attorneys said.
The misdemeanor version of the crime usually means “destruction or falsification of business records,” Konta said. “When you’re doing that in hopes of committing a separate crime, then it’s what’s called a ‘bump up.'”
The standard is akin to the legal treatment of trespassing, Konta added, noting that the mere act of trespassing is a relatively minor crime but the charge becomes far more serious if a trespasser attempts to steal.
In the Trump indictment, Bragg didn’t specify the underlying law Trump attempted to break when he allegedly falsified business records.
“The indictment doesn’t specify it because the law does not so require,” Bragg said at a press conference on Tuesday, later mentioning possible secondary crimes that include illegal promotion of a political campaign and an attempt to make false claims on tax forms.
The defense will likely attempt to force Bragg to specify which underlying crime Trump attempted to commit, while Bragg will try to keep the interpretation open-ended, so the jury merely has to find Trump attempted to commit a crime rather than any specific one, Galluzo said.
“The statute itself seems to suggest you just have to prove he was trying to break a law,” Gallluzo said. “Defense attorneys will say, ‘Well, you have to tell us what law and prove that law specifically.'”
“Prosecutors will try to keep it vague and flexible so the jury can say maybe it was this or maybe it was that, but it’s got to be one of them,” he added.
What is the penalty for falsifying business records?
The maximum penalty for a felony count of falsifying business records is four years in state prison.
“However, there’s no mandatory minimum sentence,” Galluzo said.
Due to Trump’s age and lack of a criminal history, a jail sentence of any length is unlikely if he is convicted, Galluzo added, noting however that the 13-month jail sentence served by Cohen in a related case potentially raises the possibility of incarceration for Trump.
In federal court, Cohen pleaded guilty to two violations of campaign finance law resulting from hush money payments made to Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Trump also denies having sex with McDougal.
In addition, Cohen pleaded guilty to five counts of tax fraud and one count of false statements made to a bank.
Penalties in falsification of business records cases are often driven by the amount of money at stake in the potential fraud, Daniel Hochheiser, a criminal defense attorney in New York, told ABC News.
Trump is alleged to have reimbursed Cohen for $130,000 in hush money payments, though the statement of facts accompanying the indictment claims that then-Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg agreed to a total repayment of $420,000, including other expenses and a year-end bonus.
“Somebody who makes a false business record in a $100,000 fraud is generally punished less severely than somebody who makes a false entry in a record involved in a scheme to commit a $10 million fraud,” Hochheiser said.
“I don’t see any scenario in which Trump goes to jail,” Hochheiser added. “Even if he’s convicted of everything.”
(GEORGIA) — What’s in a name? If yours is Scott Stallings, it might include tickets to attend the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia.
Scott Stallings is a real estate professional who lives in Chamblee, Georgia. He enjoys golf (and has been trying to get tickets to the Masters for years) but is by no means a PGA champion.
Scott Stallings is also the name of a 38-year-old professional golfer from Worcester, Massachusetts. He’s one of the top 100 golfers in the world, has won three PGA Tour events and is competing at the Masters this weekend.
“It was probably about five or six years ago when I actually saw him on TV and realized, you know, wow, there’s another guy that has my name, you know, playing golf,” Stallings, the realtor, told ABC’s Atlanta affiliate WSB. “So every time I saw him on TV, I’d always take a picture of it and posted it on Facebook.”
Last year, the realtor received an invitation to the Masters in the mail originally intended for the pro golfer. Both got in touch after the mixup, and to thank him for his help, Stallings, the golfer, made sure that Stallings, the realtor, got some tickets for himself.
“Just the excitement of receiving anything from Augusta National, and then, you know, kind of hearing the back and forth of him thinking that that was his ticket,” Stallings, the golfer, said. “It was a ticket, I guess, just a different kind.”
The realtor said he has been trying to attend the Masters for over a decade. The tournament, held at the private Augusta National Golf Club, is the holy grail of events for golf enthusiasts; while tickets are notoriously hard or expensive to get, the pristine landscaping, affordable, iconic foods (pimento cheese sandwiches cost $1.50, and Georgia peach ice cream sandwiches cost $2.50), and elite play make the tournament iconic.
Of golf’s four major championships, the Masters is the only tournament to consistently be played at the same course, as opposed to a rotating set of professional courses in the United States and United Kingdom. Lucky fans are able to purchase relatively affordable tickets through a lottery system orchestrated by Augusta National; fans left on the secondary market pay thousands of dollars for tickets.
“The road to the Masters is long, less traveled, just a chain of events that you couldn’t write this stuff if you tried to,” Stallings, the realtor, said.
The two united at the Augusta National this week, with the realtor watching the golfer play.
“I feel like we’ve have just entered the adult Walt Disney World,” Stallings, the realtor, said.
In addition to the tickets to attend tournament, the pro golfer invited the realtor to dinner and gave him a present: the same tickets that led to the fortunate encounter, framed and signed, “from one Scott Stallings to the next.”
(GEORGIA) — What’s in a name? If yours is Scott Stallings, it might include tickets to attend the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia.
Scott Stallings is a real estate professional who lives in Chamblee, Georgia. He enjoys golf (and has been trying to get tickets to the Masters for years) but is by no means a PGA champion.
Scott Stallings is also the name of a 38-year-old professional golfer from Worcester, Massachusetts. He’s one of the top 100 golfers in the world, has won three PGA Tour events and is competing at the Masters this weekend.
“It was probably about five or six years ago when I actually saw him on TV and realized, you know, wow, there’s another guy that has my name, you know, playing golf,” Stallings, the realtor, told ABC’s Atlanta affiliate WSB. “So every time I saw him on TV, I’d always take a picture of it and posted it on Facebook.”
Last year, the realtor received an invitation to the Masters in the mail originally intended for the pro golfer. Both got in touch after the mixup, and to thank him for his help, Stallings, the golfer, made sure that Stallings, the realtor, got some tickets for himself.
“Just the excitement of receiving anything from Augusta National, and then, you know, kind of hearing the back and forth of him thinking that that was his ticket,” Stallings, the golfer, said. “It was a ticket, I guess, just a different kind.”
The realtor said he has been trying to attend the Masters for over a decade. The tournament, held at the private Augusta National Golf Club, is the holy grail of events for golf enthusiasts; while tickets are notoriously hard or expensive to get, the pristine landscaping, affordable, iconic foods (pimento cheese sandwiches cost $1.50, and Georgia peach ice cream sandwiches cost $2.50), and elite play make the tournament iconic.
Of golf’s four major championships, the Masters is the only tournament to consistently be played at the same course, as opposed to a rotating set of professional courses in the United States and United Kingdom. Lucky fans are able to purchase relatively affordable tickets through a lottery system orchestrated by Augusta National; fans left on the secondary market pay thousands of dollars for tickets.
“The road to the Masters is long, less traveled, just a chain of events that you couldn’t write this stuff if you tried to,” Stallings, the realtor, said.
The two united at the Augusta National this week, with the realtor watching the golfer play.
“I feel like we’ve have just entered the adult Walt Disney World,” Stallings, the realtor, said.
In addition to the tickets to attend tournament, the pro golfer invited the realtor to dinner and gave him a present: the same tickets that led to the fortunate encounter, framed and signed, “from one Scott Stallings to the next.”
(FLORIDA) — Two juveniles are in custody in connection with the murders of three teenagers in the “rural, tight-knit community” of Ocklawaha, Florida, the sheriff said Friday, adding that the third suspect, also a juvenile, remains at large.
The first victim, 16-year-old Layla Silvernail, was found shot on the side of a road on March 30, Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said.
The next day, about a half mile away, a 17-year-old boy was discovered on the side of a road, also fatally shot, the sheriff said.
One day later, Silvernail’s car was found partially submerged in a pond about 9 miles from where she had been found, the sheriff said. The third victim, a 16-year-old girl, was found inside the trunk with a gunshot wound, according to the sheriff.
The three victims were all associated with gangs and were all involved in committing burglaries and robberies, Woods said at a news conference Friday.
At one point, the three victims and three suspects were all in Silvernail’s car, and the suspects then “turned on our three victims and murdered them,” Woods said.
The sheriff said robbery was the motive.
The suspects “fled the scenes, but left a lot of evidence in their wake,” Woods said, adding that the two juveniles in custody have been arrested for first-degree murder.
“They took a life without thought. They deserve the full extent of the law,” Woods said.
Russell Pierce, CEO of Southeastern Fastpitch, called Layla Silvernail “a caring young lady, an amazing athlete, and a cherished teammate to so many young girls.”
“She was a softball player from a young age and played for many teams in both recreation and travel softball,” Pierce said in a statement. “She was known for uplifting new and younger teammates and encouraging them to play hard and believe in themselves. She was truly a gifted softball player.”
The identities of the other two victims have not been released.
(NEW YORK) — When Loni James decided to look for love, she wanted to cast a wide net — and try to date around the world.
“I have always loved traveling and I realized that there’s benefits of traveling long term and you get a really unique piece when you can be overseas for a longer period of time,” James told “Good Morning America.”
The 40-year-old Washington state native decided to leave for London in the spring of 2022. Since then, she’s not only seen the sights but has been able to make connections. So far, she’s gone on dates with 34 men in 19 different countries.
“I went paragliding on a date, which was so much fun. I’m a big adventure junkie. And then I’ve had dates where it’s just been incredible chemistry and we’ve had the best conversation and haven’t looked at our phones for five hours,” she said.
James said she connects with the men through online apps and knows she has to be careful, including not sharing her personal information with strangers and making sure she stays connected to friends and family.
“I don’t let people know exactly where I’m staying,” she said. “I don’t give out my number until I’ve met you. I share my location with people back in the States, actually a couple different time zones, just to cover my bases, because my time zone is always changing.”
James was inspired to set out on this journey by her mother, who died after a longtime battle with Alzheimer’s disease and never got to fully live out her retirement dreams.
“Life isn’t guaranteed, retirement isn’t guaranteed. I wanted to create the life that I wanted now and I didn’t want to put it off and hope that it would be a possibility somewhere down the line,” said James, who has since started a blog documenting her dating and traveling experiences.
James said she’s learned a lot about personal connections. Since James said she is upfront with each man about her mission, she’s found that men have been more willing to open up since there’s no pressure for a second date.
“I sit across from someone, or go on a walk or go on an adventure and get to ask them about their culture,” said James. “I get to ask them what it’s like dating. I get to ask them about gender roles and their views on love and relationships.”
(CALIFORNIA) — In the small community of Silver Lakes, California, Sabrina and Robert Limon were once the life of the party. The so-called “it couple” was known for throwing booze-filled gatherings for their tight-knit group of friends dubbed “the wolf pack.”
But when a firefighter named Jonathan Hearn swept Sabrina off her feet, it led to a sordid crime that no one saw coming.
The love triangle murder case involving wiretapping, Bible verses and allegations of poisoned pudding is the subject of a new “20/20” airing April 7 at 9 p.m. ET. The broadcast features interviews from friends, family and investigators, and ABC News’ Deborah Roberts goes back to the location of the murder with detectives to retrace the investigation.
In 2008, Sabrina and Robert Limon decided that they wanted to have a bit more excitement in their lives, so they opened up their marriage to other couples.
“They went on adult vacations. They went out boating. They partied a lot at the North Lake,” Julie Cordova, Sabrina’s sister, told “20/20.”
Cordova said that Sabrina eventually grew “tired of being in an open marriage” and “wanted [the couple] to go back to church,” but her husband didn’t want anything to change.
“Sabrina was drinking so much, all the time, that she was pretty numb,” Cordova said.
On Aug. 17, 2014, Robert was shot and killed while working at the BNSF railyard in Tehachapi. Investigators believed the crime scene had been staged to look like Robert was killed during a botched robbery, former Kern County Detective Darin Grantham told “20/20.”
But who would have a motive to kill the beloved husband and father of two?
“He was well-liked by everyone and no one could imagine any reason why someone would want to kill Robert,” former Kern Country Detective Tommy Robins told “20/20.”
Detectives scoured the area for surveillance cameras. Footage from the railyard around the time of the murder showed an unknown man limping around. A nearby company provided surveillance video that showed Robert Limon on the road that led to his office, with multiple other vehicles on the road. All of the other motorists, with the exception of a man on a motorcycle, were able to be identified, Grantham said.
That motorcyclist’s identity remained a mystery until investigators received a call two weeks after Limon’s death. Jason Bernatene, a friend of the Limons, told detectives that he got a strange voicemail from a man named Jonathan Hearn, who seemed “very apologetic for Rob’s death,” Grantham said.
The tip put Hearn on detectives’ radar for the very first time and changed the course of the investigation.
Detectives would learn that Sabrina and Hearn were having an affair after meeting at a Costco where Sabrina worked part-time. Bonding over their shared Christian faith, they started a relationship behind Robert’s back. Eventually, Robert Limon discovered intimate texts between the two on Sabrina’s phone and demanded Sabrina end the affair. But she kept seeing Hearn.
In the wake of Robert’s murder, detectives decided to wiretap Sabrina and Hearn’s phones. The couple talked a lot about God and the Bible. In one exchange with Sabrina, Hearn can be overhead saying, “Hi God. We are on our knees for a reason. We have been dirt bags, we’ve been sinners. We’ve been selfish and we sinned.”
Despite some intriguing exchanges between the couple, nothing proved a murder plot against Robert, detectives said. Investigators then decided to feed Sabrina false information about the murder investigation to see how she would react — Sabrina immediately called Hearn on a burner phone to alert him about the new details.
On Nov. 18, 2014, Hearn and Sabrina were arrested on suspicion of killing Robert. At Hearn’s home, detectives found a motorcycle, a helmet, a red bandana and a backpack matching the description of a mystery man seen on surveillance footage in the area where Robert was killed, and a grocery bag full of receipts, authorities said.
Within a few days, Sabrina was let go from custody due to insufficient evidence linking her to the crime, while Hearn, charged with murder, remained behind bars.
Hearn struck a plea deal that would give him a 25-year sentence in exchange for testifying about Sabrina’s alleged involvement in the murder scheme.
Two years after her husband’s death, Sabrina was arrested for his murder. She pleaded not guilty to all charges.
At trial, Hearn admitted to killing Robert and alleged Sabrina helped him plan it, after she rejected Hearn’s suggestion to divorce her husband. Hearn testified that Sabrina “expressed that [Robert] would honestly rather be dead than divorced…Losing her would essentially kill him.” Hearn also claimed there was a first failed plot to poison Robert’s banana pudding with arsenic prior to the fatal shooting. Hearn testified that when it came to the fatal attack on Robert in Tehachapi, Sabrina provided a layout of the BNSF facility and Robert’s work schedule.
Testifying in her own defense, Sabrina denied any involvement in planning her husband’s murder, along with the attempted poisoning plot alleged by Hearn. Richard Terry, Sabrina’s defense attorney, argued that Hearn’s plea deal gave him an incentive to lie on the stand.
As for the wiretapped conversations, Sabrina Limon said at trial, “[Jonathan] wanted to know everything that was going on, and I told him. I trusted him. He had told me that, you know, just the dangers of what could happen when an affair is exposed, how the police think and how they work.”
On Feb. 21, 2018, Sabrina Limon was convicted on four of the six counts against her, including first-degree murder, attempted murder, solicitation of murder and conspiracy. She was acquitted of the alleged poisoning attempt on Robert’s life. She was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
In January, the California Supreme Court denied a petition to review Sabrina’s murder conviction after she previously appealed for a new trial.
Hearn was convicted of manslaughter, not murder, and sentenced to 25 years and four months in prison.
(NEW YORK) — As cameras captured former President Trump entering Manhattan criminal court earlier this week to face a 34-count indictment, a number of images of him began circulating on social media.
Some of the images, which were fabricated, appeared to be mug shots of the former president, even though his lawyers told reporters the former president did not take a booking photo during police processing on Tuesday.
Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign nonetheless capitalized on the trend, sending out an email advertising a T-shirt with a fake mug shot of Trump that could be purchased online. It’s a tactic the Trump team has turned to before, fundraising off both of his impeachments and the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago in a search for classified documents.
While that image appeared to be a more obvious fabrication, others were markedly more subtle and may have been generated by artificial intelligence, the latest in a series of hyper-realistic fake images deceiving many online and raising concerns over the sophistication and accessibility of AI-powered tools.
Here’s what to know about these AI-generated images:
What other images went viral?
A fabricated image of Pope Francis wearing a floor-length, white puffer jacket racked up over 30 million views last week across several posts. It’s just the latest in a series of recent images that have flooded social platforms.
“These cases where it feels like the stakes are low are worrying because it shows that when our guard is not up, the general public is more susceptible to fakes,” Henry Ajder, an AI researcher who hosts a podcast on the technology on BBC Radio, told ABC News.
The fictional image of Pope Francis was first posted by a user in a Subreddit dedicated to showing works created by an image generator program called Midjourney and was possibly created by the tool.
Last week, Midjourney announced that because of “extraordinary demand and trial abuse” it has paused the ability for users to generate a certain set of images for free. The service is now only available through a variety of subscription plans.
The tool, which ABC News reviewed, is one of several text-to-image tools powered by artificial intelligence, that allows users to input a natural language description, called a prompt, to get an image in return.
Some tools like OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 don’t allow users to create images of public figures. Their content policy also states that users should not upload images of people without their consent.
Why are experts alarmed?
It’s the hyper-realism of the images that worries synthetic media experts like Ajder.
“When you are scrolling through social media, these images are subconsciously flying past,” he said. “You don’t need to critically examine an image for it to impact the way you see a person or see the world.”
On the day of Trump’s court hearing, ABC News found that thousands of fabricated images of Trump had been generated on the platform. Only a dozen leaped onto social media platforms and circulated more widely, but it wasn’t the first time the public had seen an AI-fake connected to him.
When asked about the viral images created using their tool, Midjourney founder David Holz told ABC News they are working on more “nuanced moderation policies based on community feedback.”
“There are always risks that are hard to predict and the goal has to be to find them, adapt to them, and move forward,” Holz added in an email.
On March 20, as news of former President Donald Trump’s possible indictment made headlines, a series of fake photos imagining his supposed arrest circulated on Twitter.
The former president had not yet been arrested, but he predicted (incorrectly) just days earlier that his arrest was imminent.
The Trump photos, which falsely depicted events that did not happen, were created by Eliot Higgins, the founder of Netherlands-based investigative news outlet Bellingcat.
“Making pictures of Trump getting arrested while waiting for Trump’s arrest,” Higgins tweeted on March 20 along with the images. Higgins told ABC News he created the series of images for fun.
Higgins told ABC News he was surprised these fake images of Trump received so much attention, but it was good to see that they encouraged discussion around AI image creation.
What is causing this wave of hyper-realistic fakes?
Experts like Sam Gregory, the executive director at the global human rights network WITNESS, say it’s a combination of factors: ease of use and accessibility of these tools, improved photo-realism and the ability to churn out volume.
“This is a real worry,” said Gregory, who has spent the last five years leading an initiative to prepare journalists and educate the public on the potential harms of AI-generated media.
Gregory added a commercial arms race between AI-companies is contributing to the rapid development of these tools and the lack of safeguards.
“We’re also in the middle of a headlong commercial rush that is completely about the needs of Silicon Valley, and ignoring the needs of most people across the U.S. and frankly, most people across the world who might say wait a second, where are the safeguards here? How are you making sure these are not misused,” Gregory said.
What are the solutions?
Ajder said the onus should be on the companies creating the AI technology to limit access by “creating friction for bad actors.”
Steps like providing bank details or verifying users’ identities through other accounts might make it more challenging for some to misuse the tools, he told ABC News.
Gregory stressed the importance of not putting all the pressure of identifying AI-generated media on the public, but instead focusing on making detection tools widely available.
“We’re going to be living with tremendously creative power that’s more distributed, more available, more fun in many ways, but we have to really understand how we put these guardrails around it,” he said.
Hundreds of top AI researchers along with some of the biggest names in tech signed a letter this week urging labs to immediately pause on training new powerful AI systems for six months, in order to ensure their “effects will be positive and their risks manageable.”
(COLORADO) — The humble beaver could become one of America’s hardest working allies in the race to adapt to climate change.
Beavers are natural engineers. They instinctively build dams and canals of water to keep themselves safe because they’re clumsy on land. And capturing that water creates ecosystems for other animals to survive, earning beavers the moniker of a “keystone species.”
A growing movement of nonprofits, experts and government agencies see a potential to take a lesson from beavers’ natural engineering prowess to capture more of that water for the places that desperately need it.
“Beavers benefit a lot of things in the context of climate change,” Emily Fairfax, assistant professor of environmental science and resource management at California State University Channel Islands, told ABC News.
“The ones that are most directly sort of in our eyesight right now is the beavers’ ability to protect ecosystems during droughts, during floods, during wildfires, during extreme disturbances. And in those patches of habitat that they’re protecting, there’s a huge amount of biodiversity”
In addition to storing water, Fairfax’s research has shown that areas with beaver dams are more resilient to wildfires because the plants and trees are so wet they don’t burn. And she said they could help capture water from extreme rain events like the atmospheric rivers in California to be accessed by those water systems later.
“Beavers sort of figured this out instinctually over 7 million years of evolution that their dams and their canals work because they take the whole hydrologic cycle and they just make it more stable, more consistent,” she said.
Beavers haven’t always been recognized for their benefits. Fur trapping dramatically reduced the population starting in the 1700s and even today beavers are sometimes seen as a nuisance and killed. The animals are sometimes relocated away from urban areas where their dams could cause disruptions and flooding, which experts like Fairfax said can sometimes be appropriate but is not always the right approach.
Instead of treating them like pests, groups like the National Forest Foundation are looking to take a lesson from beavers’ work to find a nature-based approach to adapt to impacts of climate change like worsening drought conditions.
“There’s a lot of streams and headwaters to the Colorado River that used to run perennially, year-round, that we now see have stopped. And so we might be able to, as we do enough of these, turn some of those stream flows back on on an annual basis. And seeing those regular additions throughout the year could have huge benefits to the system as a whole,” said Marcus Selig, chief conservation officer with the National Forest Foundation.
The National Forest Foundation is a nonprofit created by Congress to support national forests. Selig said their work building man-made “beaver dam analogs” can help capture more water in the Colorado River, which has been struggling with historically low water levels after more than two decades of drought.
The analogs are a manmade version of what beavers would instinctively build, using sticks and mud to create a natural barrier to slow water down and create a wetland area that feeds into the river.
“The work we do with beaver dam analogs and low-tech process-based restoration is holding that water in the higher elevations as the snow melts and so that it can be released slowly throughout the year, giving more continuous, dependable flows to downstream users,” Selig said, adding that it can help communities downstream receive water more consistently.
“Our big dream is that we can restore every headwater, every watershed that feeds into the Colorado River on national forest lands. And so we’re working on creating that pipeline of projects right now,” he added.
Selig said this kind of work hasn’t been scaled up enough to identify how much of a larger impact it could have and they still need more funding to do so, but said the foundation is working with the U.S. Forest Service to add projects in 14 different national forests around the Colorado River.
Fairfax said river systems like the Colorado have lost a lot of the wetlands that would have existed 200 years ago so replicating them either by creating man-made beaver dams or relocating beavers to streams in the area can help make the river more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
“Bringing back beavers and restoring the wetlands, it’s not like we’re introducing something new to save the Colorado River Basin. We’re just trying to get it back to the state it was in when it was stable and when it was healthier,” she said.
Similar projects are growing around the country, some with support from states or the federal government. California has dedicated $1.6 million to hire staff to start similar projects in the state.
And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has partnered with groups like Trout Unlimited to relocate beavers in Washington state to beef up streams and protect salmon populations.
Fairfax said there will need to be a balance between this kind of low tech restoration work around rivers and streams and limiting the impacts on infrastructure or getting buy-in from private property owners.
“If we wanna do this at scale, not just in like a hobby context, we as a society need to be giving up control and giving up space. And those are 2 things that we don’t like to give up,” she said.
But Fairfax said she’s optimistic that beavers could be a relatively low cost solution with big potential benefits to help us adapt to the changing climate. And she said supporting beaver populations or protecting beavers that live in your area is a way for individuals to be involved in a climate solution.
“It’s easy to recruit a beaver. Literally just leave it alone, and it’s recruited. And that’s really powerful. Because then you get all these benefits of the beaver engineering and as long as you don’t step on its toes too much, it’s gonna keep doing its thing,” she said.
“So parting with beavers, I think, is a very powerful way for us to expand our ability to tackle climate change without having to do it all ourselves.”
