AI-generated videos and photos used for political disinformation are the scourge of a busy global election year, and Brazil is scrambling to regulate the technology ahead of municipal elections.
In a country of 203 million people that has more phones than people, Brazilian authorities last week banned the use of deepfake technology and set guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence for electoral purposes.
“Video montages can be used to manipulate public opinion, to defame individuals or to interfere with the democratic process,” Ana Carolina da Hora, a computer expert at PUC Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro, told AFP.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence, supercharged by the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, has shaken up the online landscape while instilling awe and fear about the future of technology.
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In a video circulating on social media in Brazil, the country’s biggest pop star Anitta and soccer icon Neymar are promoting an online gambling scheme, or rather, making ultra-realistic celebrity deepfakes.
But in a country hard-hit by political misinformation, authorities are particularly alarmed by cases like that of a mayor whose voice was cloned to create an audio file shared on social media in which he insults teachers in his municipality.
Similar cases are being investigated in two other states.
“The most modern standards”
The Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) decided to act. Last week, the use of deepfake technology was officially banned in the campaign for the October municipal elections.
Any other type of use of artificial intelligence for electoral purposes must be accompanied by a clearly identifiable disclosure to the public.
Candidates caught using deepfake technology on the campaign trail could be disqualified from running or have their mandates revoked if elected.
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TSE president Alexandre de Moraes said these were some of the most modern standards in the world in relation to fighting disinformation, fake news and the illegal use of artificial intelligence.
He warned that deepfake technology could “change the outcome of the election”.
In Brazil, former President Jair Bolsonaro was banned from office until 2030 for abuse of power and abuse of the media after he claimed, without evidence, that the Brazilian electoral system was not secure.
“The fact is that humanity is falling victim to algorithms… and being manipulated by artificial intelligence, in a way that has never been seen in history,” President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said last week in an interview with the RedeTV channel. .
Lula narrowly beat Bolsonaro in a bitterly divided 2022 election, and municipal elections in October will be a crucial test of his popularity.
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“No single solution”
Deepfake technology is also worrying experts in the United States, where opponents of President Joe Biden recently released an AI-generated call using his voice urging people not to vote in a primary election.
The non-profit Center to Combat Digital Hate (CCDH) warned on Wednesday that many artificial intelligence generation tools continue to allow the creation of misleading images related to political candidates and voting.
Twenty digital giants, including Meta, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, TikTok and X, joined last month in a pledge to fight AI content designed to mislead voters.
They promised to use technologies to deal with potentially harmful AI content, such as watermarks invisible to the human eye but detectable by a machine.
In Brazil, Congress has entered the debate and Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco has introduced a bill to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in all aspects of life, which he hopes will be passed in April.
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There is “no one-size-fits-all solution to regulating AI,” said Bruno Bioni, director of Data Privacy Brazil, a data protection and digital rights organization, who pointed out that AI affects sectors ranging from telecommunications to health .
He also highlighted the risk of discrimination linked to AI facial recognition in a country where more than half the population is black or mixed race.
Source: AFP