A wave of AI deepfakes tied to elections in Europe and Asia has coursed through social media for months, serving as a warning for more than 50 countries heading to the polls this year.

Artificial intelligence is supercharging the threat of election disinformation worldwide, making it easy for anyone with a smartphone and a devious imagination to create fake – but convincing – content aimed at fooling voters.

It marks a quantum leap from a few years ago, when creating phony photos, videos or audio clips required teams of people with time, technical skill and money. Now, using free and low-cost generative artificial intelligence services from companies like Google and OpenAI, anyone can create high-quality “deepfakes” with just a simple text prompt.

A wave of AI deepfakes tied to elections in Europe and Asia has coursed through social media for months, serving as a warning for more than 50 countries heading to the polls this year.

  • girlfreddy@lemmy.caEnglish
    53·
    4 months ago

    “The novelty and sophistication of the technology makes it hard to track who is behind AI deepfakes. Experts say governments and companies are not yet capable of stopping the deluge, nor are they moving fast enough to solve the problem.”

    And that’s the problem. When AI was first announced gov’ts should have put a few rules in place to safeguard citizens while gov’ts delved deeper. Instead, as always, they ignored the possible issues and let capitalism reign.

    • i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      31·
      4 months ago

      When was AI first announced? What kind of rules could the government have put in place to effectively prevent people outside their jurisdiction from using freely available technology on their own computers?

      • girlfreddy@lemmy.caEnglish
        11·
        4 months ago

        When was AI first announced?

        In 2016, by Google.

        What kind of rules could the government have put in place to effectively prevent people outside their jurisdiction from using freely available technology on their own computers?

        That before the public had access to AI, the gov’t would gather unbiased experts together to disseminate what effects AI could/would have on politics, education, fake news, journalism, etc.

        It’s not hard for the gov’t to do their jobs. We just have to hold them to account.

        • piecat@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          4 months ago

          General AI has been a philosophical concept and science fiction topic for decades. It’s been a goal since at least the 80s.