Meta’s Strategy to Combat Disinformation and AI Misuse in Europe
BRUSSELS: Facebook owner Meta is setting up a group to combat disinformation and the misuse of generative artificial intelligence in the run-up to June’s European Parliament elections, amid concerns about election tampering and misleading content created by artificial intelligence.
The rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence, which can create text, images and videos in seconds in response to prompts, has sparked fears that the new technology could be used to disrupt major elections around the world this year.
The European Parliament elections will be held on the 6th-9th. June. Its 720 legislators together with EU governments approve new EU policies and laws.
“As elections approach, we activate the Elections Operations Center to identify potential threats and implement mitigations in real-time,” Marco Pancini, Meta’s director of EU affairs, said in a blog post.
He said experts from the company’s intelligence, data science, engineering, research, operations, content policy and legal teams are focused on countering disinformation, advocacy efforts and the risks associated with the misuse of generative AI.
Pancini said Meta, which currently works with 26 independent fact-checking organizations across the European Union and covers 22 languages, will add three new partners in Bulgaria, France and Slovakia.
Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and 17 other tech companies agreed earlier this month to work together to prevent fraudulent AI content from interfering with elections around the world this year.
