BRUSSELS: Meta, the parent company of Facebook, will establish a team to address disinformation and the misuse of generative artificial intelligence in the run-up to European Parliament elections in June, amid growing concerns regarding election interference and the dissemination of misleading AI-generated content.
Meta, currently collaborating with 26 independent fact-checking organizations across the European Union covering 22 languages, intends to expand its partnerships by adding three new collaborators in Bulgaria, France, and Slovakia.
The exponential advancement of generative AI, capable of rapidly generating text, images, and video based on prompts, has raised alarms over its potential exploitation to disrupt significant elections worldwide this year.
Scheduled from June 6th to 9th, the European Parliament elections involve 720 lawmakers who, in collaboration with EU governments, enact new EU policies and legislation. Marco Pancini, Meta’s head of EU affairs, announced plans to activate an Elections Operations Center as the election draws near.
This centre will proactively identify potential threats and implement real-time mitigations. Pancini stated that a multidisciplinary team comprising experts from Meta’s intelligence, data science, engineering, research, operations, content policy, and legal departments will concentrate on countering misinformation, addressing influence operations, and mitigating the risks associated with the misuse of generative AI.
Earlier this month, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and 17 other technology companies pledged to collaborate in preventing deceptive artificial intelligence content from interfering with elections globally this year.
