EU Election: Meta Set Up Team To Combat Disinformation, AI Misuse

Meta will set up a team to combat disinformation and the abuse of generative artificial intelligence in the forthcoming run-up of European Parliament elections in June amid concerns about election interference and misleading AI-generated content.

Generative AI, which can create text, images and video in seconds in response to prompts, has triggered fears that the new technology could be used to disrupt major election across the world this year.

The elections will take place from 6-9th of June. Its 720 lawmakers, together with EU governments, pass new EU policies and laws.

Also Read: EU Election: Google To Launch Anti-Misinformation campaign

“As the election approaches, we’ll activate an Elections Operations Center to identify potential threats and put mitigations in place in real time,” Marco Pancini, Meta’s head 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 will focus on combating misinformation, tackling influence operations and counter the risks related to the abuse of generative AI.

“Meta, which currently works with 26 independent fact-checking organisations across the European Union covering 22 languages, will add three new partners in Bulgaria, France, and Slovakia,’’ Pancini said.

Earlier this month Meta, Microsoft OpenAI and 17 other tech companies agreed to work together to prevent deceptive artificial-intelligence content from interfering with elections across the globe this year.