Tweaking political content with AI? Govt, Big Tech are watching

livemint.com:

NEW DELHI : Big Tech firms like OpenAI, Google and Meta agreed to add checks and balances to deepfakes and election-related discussions on online platforms, after meeting with officials at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), including Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and Rajeev Chandrasekhar. At least three senior officials close to the developments told Mint that the meetings gave the tech firms “informal directives" to tackle issues of misinformation, by curbing artificial intelligence (AI)-driven content and generative results about “highly sensitive keywords".

Union IT minister Vaishnaw confirmed the meetings, in response to Mint’s queries. Since participating in these meetings, Google and Meta have both published notes on tackling AI-altered content and advertisements on intermediary, search and conversational AI platforms, which include ChatGPT, Facebook, Gemini, Google Search, Instagram, WhatsApp and YouTube, among others.

Each of these firms were recommended to take a “precautionary" approach to information generated by AI, including clearly labelling such content on political advertisements, and restricting AI’s ability to produce search results on key political personalities, parties, or any opinion related to the upcoming 2024 general elections. US-headquartered firm Adobe—which runs Photoshop, one of the world’s largest creative visualization tools—has taken a similarly careful approach towards how its generative tool, Firefly, can be used to manipulate or create imagery that could be used in political campaigns, said Andy Parsons, senior director of Adobe’s content authenticity initiative, in an interview with Mint.