One of Venezuela’s newest news anchors sits on a stool, dressed in a flannel shirt and chinos as he delivers the day’s headlines.

He goes by “El Pana,” Venezuelan slang for “friend.”

Only, he’s not real.

El Pana, and his colleague “La Chama,” or “The Girl,” are generated using artificial intelligence, though they look, sound and move realistically.

They were created as part of an initiative dubbed “Operation Retweet” by Colombia-based organization Connectas, led by director Carlos Huertas, to publish news from a dozen independent media outlets in Venezuela and in the process protect reporters as the government has launched a crackdown on journalists and protesters.

“We decided to use artificial intelligence to be the ‘face’ of the information we’re publishing,” Huertas said in an interview, “because our colleagues who are still out doing their jobs are facing much more risk.”

At least 10 journalists have been arrested since mid-June and eight remain imprisoned on charges including terrorism, according to Reporters Without Borders.

“Here, using artificial intelligence is… almost like a mix between technology and journalism,” Huertas said, explaining the project looked to “circumvent the persecution and increasing repression” from the government as there would be no one who could face arrest.

The country’s opposition and human rights groups have said recent arrests of protesters, opposition figures and journalists are part of a government crackdown meant to quiet a sometimes violent, month-long election dispute.

Venezuela’s communications ministry did not respond to a request for comment about the AI journalism initiative. No official has responded to repeated requests for comment by Reuters about the arrests of journalists in recent weeks.

Both the opposition and President Nicolas Maduro claimed victory in the July 28 election.

Maduro, in power since 2013, is backed by the Supreme Court and the electoral authority, which has not published full vote tallies because of what it says was a cyber-attack.

The opposition has shared what it says are more than 80% of vote tallies, showing a resounding win for its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez. Some international observers and many Western countries have said election conditions were unfair and demanded full tallies.

Protests since the vote have led to at least 27 deaths and 2,400 arrests, and detentions of opposition figures and protesters have continued as part of the government’s “Operation Knock Knock.”

Maduro and his administration have called protesters fascists and said they are inciting hate at the behest of countries like the United States, which Washington denies.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Over 700 people arrested during protests that erupted after Venezuela’s disputed Presidential election have been transferred to maximum security prisons. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

More than 700 people arrested during protests that erupted after Venezuela’s disputed presidential election have been transferred to maximum security prisons, a human rights group said Saturday, August 31, 2024.

The detainees, who had been held at police stations around the country, were transferred over the past week to two notorious prisons that were previously controlled by gangs, the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory said.

“In many cases, the transfers were conducted under questionable circumstances, with detainees’ relatives not informed of the moves to Tocuyito and Tocoron prisons,” the group said.

“They were conducted with many irregularities,” the NGO said in a press release.

More than 2,400 people were arrested after the protests that broke out after President Nicolas Maduro was declared winner of the disputed July 28 election.

The Opposition claims it won by a landslide and has voting records to prove this.

The leftist Maduro government, brushing off accusations of authoritarianism, has resisted intense international pressure to release vote tally numbers to back up its claim of victory.

The United States, the European Union, and several Latin American countries have refused to recognize Maduro as having won without seeing detailed voting results.

Violence that accompanied the protests left 27 people dead and 192 injured.

Also Read: Anti-Maduro protests spread as Venezuelan opposition says he stole vote

Venezuelan Prisons Observatory said none of the people transferred to maximum security facilities have been allowed to contact their families or attorneys.

Of the 2,400 detainees, 1,581 have been listed as political prisoners by another advocacy group, called Penal Forum.

Penal Forum said 114 of the total are adolescents and at least 40 of them were released on bail Saturday. Sixteen were freed from detention on Thursday.

Some of those arrested are as young as 13 and have been sent to prisons with older, common criminals, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said this week.

“What they have done is brutal,” she said of the Maduro government.