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Major tech companies announced a new agreement at the Munich security conference on Friday, promising to fight AI-generated fake Whose objective is to deceive the public and influence the elections. The press conference, which was livestreamed online, included leaders of Big Tech firms who have been under immense pressure to address the misinformation that has spread online in recent years, as putting words in someone else’s mouth. It had become easy.
Signatories to the agreement include Adobe, Amazon, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok and Sustainability AI, and OpenAI.
While it is easy to understand the potential problems posed by AI during election season, the solutions are much harder to come by. And that really shines through in today’s official news release from the tech companies, which is full of phrases that sound pleasant without too many specifics, like “promoting cross-industry flexibility” and “reducing the risk Applying technology.”
The new agreement is purely symbolic, but the fact that it includes almost every major consumer-facing tech company certainly shows how seriously they take this issue. At the same time, these same CEOs clearly understand concerns about free speech in an era when claims of censorship by Big Tech have become a political football.
“This is not about substituting the views of one or several tech companies for the right of people to stand up and have their say,” Microsoft’s Brad Smith said at Friday’s press conference, according to a livestream of the event.
“But the right of free expression does not put a person in a position to put his words into someone else’s mouth in such a way as to deceive the public by pretending that someone used words that he Never spoke or went to places he’d never been,” Smith continued.
And while this may possibly seem true, the First Amendment would likely disagree with Smith. The American tradition of free speech gives people wide latitude to ridicule public figures with parodies and even deepfakes. One area where people could get into legal trouble would be conspiring to deprive others of their rights, such as the case where in 2016 a far-right troll created photoshopped images targeting Hillary Clinton voters and posted them Urged to vote by text, something that is not possible. The U.S. Justice Department charged the man last year who now faces 10 years jail,
But the fight against deepfakes largely brings Republicans and Democrats together. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, and Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, issued a bipartisan statement in support of the new agreement.
“We believe it is important for technology companies to take proactive and responsible steps to address the growing risk of AI-enabled content in our elections,” the senators said in a joint statement praising the new initiative.
“We support the voluntary commitments the tech sector is making through the Tech Pact to combat deceptive use of AI in the 2024 elections, but will continue to hold the industry accountable,” the statement added.
AI Election Agreement, which has its own website, which will obviously attract the most attention for the upcoming presidential election this November. But these are all global companies operating in almost every country around the world. And the US is not the only country grappling with the rise of easily generated images and videos that have the potential to influence elections. According to the AI Elections Agreement website, more than four billion people in 40 countries will vote in 2024.
Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, said in a written statement, “With so many major elections coming up this year, it is important that we do everything we can to prevent people from being deceived by AI-generated content.”
“The task is bigger than any one company and will require a huge effort from industry, government and civil society. Hopefully, this agreement can serve as a meaningful step by the industry in addressing that challenge.”
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