On Tuesday, the European Union (EU) urged Facebook, TikTok, and other major tech companies to take decisive action against deepfakes and other AI-generated content by implementing clear labels ahead of the European elections in June.
Under the Eurpean Union’s landmark AI legislation, Digital Markets Act, approved by lawmakers earlier this month, it can govern AI content on 22 “very large” social sites like Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, X(formerly known as Twitter).
The EC wants those sites to clearly label political advertising and must reduce the “virality of content” and disinformation that could jeopardise the integrity of the polls. Brussels is particularly worried about the impact of “Russian manipulation“.
European Union’s action
According to the newly released guidelines, the EU Commission said major platforms must “assess and mitigate specific risks associated with AI, such as by clearly labelling “content generated by AI” so that viewers would be well informed in advance about it otherwise it would known as “Deepfake“.
Europe’s Digital Commissioner Thierry Breton says that with today’s guidelines, they are making full use of all the tools offered by the Digital Services Act to ensure platforms comply with their obligations and are not misused to manipulate their elections, while safeguarding freedom of expression. While the guidelines are not legally binding, platforms are required to outline alternative “equally effective” measures if they chose not to comply.
As mentioned, EU may request further information if regulators do not believe there is non-compliance, while companies also risk being investigated and fined. “Stress-tests” to be conducted by EU in collaboration with relevant platforms in late April to assess their preparedness.
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and four other platforms were inquired by the Election Commission to provide more information on how they are countering AI risks to polls.
India’s take on this issue
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and IT has has issued a warning on social media platforms in India to take strict action against deepfakes and AI generated content spreading misinformation on their platforms based on ‘explicit rules’ ahead of the 2024 General Elections.
Considering, India has its largest online population of 870 million users and 600million social media users, is gearing up for the 2024 general elections, which as per the reports will become the biggest targets for AI- generated misinformation in upcoming years.
Minister Chandrashekhar in an interview said,” We are the world’s largest democracy, we are obviously deeply concerned about the impact of cross-border actors using disinformation, using misinformation, using deepfakes to cause problems in our democracy. We have been alert to this earlier than most countries because it impacts us in bad ways much more than smaller countries”.
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