European Commission Grills Big Tech on AI Risks to Elections: Deepfakes, Misinformation in Focus

cryptonews.com:

The European Commission formally enquired into strategies adopted by big tech companies on March 14 to mitigate generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) risks capable of misleading election voters. The commission has given Big Techs an April 3 deadline to provide documents and information to its requests.

The European Commission issued the official request to big technological companies including Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Google Search, Bing, Snapchat, and YouTube on AI-related risk.

According to Bloomberg

, this was conveyed in a formal request for information (RFI).

The commission asked these companies to provide further information about hazards posed by generative AI

This is because these big techs, through their respective platforms allow users to create and spread content using the technology.

The EU is more concerned about the precautions to mitigate the risks of generative AI to election voters. Therefore, it believes that the spread of viral deepfakes and automated service manipulation can impact voters’ perceptions.

There is now proposed legislation requiring gen AI companies to share details of their training data in the US, the EU and the UK. It’s not perfect, but it’s a strong move in the right direction.

US: https://t.co/uBirDixCZi

EU: https://t.co/o0DZ9mxCYY

UK:…

— Ed Newton-Rex (@ednewtonrex) March 12, 2024

In its remarks, the commission said these generative AI gives a form of “hallucination.”

Following the information requests, the European Commission has the authority to impose penalties for errors, inconsistencies, or misrepresentation.

This decision follows the EU’s recent e-commerce and online governance regulations – the Digital Services Act (DSA).

This act classified eight platforms as