UN report highlights ‘serious and urgent’ concerns about AI deepfakes

The United Nations has deemed artificial intelligence-generated media a “grave and pressing” danger to the accuracy of information, especially on social media platforms.

In a report released on June 12, the UN warned that the danger of false information being disseminated online had increased significantly due to the rapid development of technologies such as generative artificial intelligence, with deepfakes being especially highlighted.

The United Nations declared that artificial intelligence can create false information and hate speech that is presented to users as if it were factual. Last month, a fabricated image and news report of an explosion near the Pentagon, generated by AI, caused the S&P 500 to briefly decline.

It urged AI stakeholders to tackle the proliferation of misinformation and implored them to take “immediate and urgent” steps to guarantee the proper utilization of AI, further stating:

On the same day, UN Secretary-General António Guterres held a press conference and declared that the “alarm bells” concerning generative AI are “deafening” and that the loudest warnings are coming from the creators of the technology.

Secretary-General Guterres stated that the report will be used to create a UN Code of Conduct for Information Integrity on Digital Platforms in preparation for the Summit of the Future, a conference to be held in late September 2024 to facilitate inter-governmental conversations on a variety of topics.

“It is our hope that governments, digital platforms, and other stakeholders will voluntarily adopt the Code of Conduct,” he stated.

On June 13, Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and William Hague, a Conservative Party politician, issued a report on Artificial Intelligence.

The pair proposed that the governments of the U.K., United States, and other allies should advocate for an updated UN protocol for immediate protections.

The UK will be granted ‘early or priority access’ to AI models from Google and OpenAI.

The pair declared that the advent of AI might be the most complicated policy issue ever experienced, due to its unpredictable evolution and ever-growing power.

Blair and Hague noted that the current strategies and methods employed by the government are not well-suited for this type of technology.

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