Concerned about electoral meddling and deceptive AI-generated material, Facebook owner Meta has formed a team to combat misinformation and the misuse of generative AI in the lead-up to the June elections for the European Parliament.
Fears have been raised about the potential for generative AI, which can produce text, graphics, and video in seconds in response to cues, to be used to sabotage important elections this year all over the world due to its rapid expansion.
European Parliament elections will take place June 6-9. Its 720 lawmakers, together with EU governments, pass new EU policies and laws.
“As the election approaches, we’ll activate an Elections Operations Center to identify potential threats and put mitigations in place in real time,” Marco Pancini, Meta’s head of EU affairs, said in a blogpost.
He said experts from the company’s intelligence, data science, engineering, research, operations, content policy and legal teams will focus on combating misinformation, tackling influence operations and counter the risks related to the abuse of generative AI.
Meta, which currently works with 26 independent fact-checking organisations across the European Union covering 22 languages, will add three new partners in Bulgaria, France, and Slovakia, Pancini said.
Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and 17 other tech companies earlier this month agreed to work together to prevent deceptive artificial-intelligence content from interfering with elections across the globe this year.
