The EU is planning to push companies to better moderate misleading content including deepfakes through laws like the Digital Services Act, a flagship content moderation law that enters fully into force Saturday. EU cybersecurity agencies will also present a manual at the end of February for national electoral authorities to prevent AI from disrupting the upcoming EU vote in June.
One EU diplomat, granted anonymity to discuss confidential meetings, said that “countries were unsure what to make of it because even if the initiative itself can be encouraged, countries cannot just sign a text from a private company.”
Jourová, who has steered EU efforts to fight disinformation in past years, said, “The Commission stands ready to do its own job.” She welcomed the industry accord, saying that “the combination of AI serving the purposes of disinformation campaigns might be the end of democracy, not only in the EU member states.”
Meanwhile, Warner underscored the critical importance of the tech companies honoring the voluntary commitment, since if any of 2024’s elections saw “massive foreign malign influence,” the potential of AI would be “swept aside, because I think people will react in an overly regulatory environment.”
Some companies in recent weeks came out with their separate plans to label and remove political deepfakes seeking to mislead the electorate.
In January, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E, promised to enhance its tools to flag AI-made content, and instruct ChatGPT to promote accurate information about voting procedures. Meta, Facebook and Instagram parent company, announced earlier this month that it would ramp up efforts to label all images created with AI.
To some in the technology industry, the Tech Accord initiative diverts attention from keeping tech companies in check through regulation and oversight.
Democracies are “well past the era where we can trust companies to self-regulate,” Meredith Whittaker, co-founder of the AI Now Institute, told POLITICO this week.
