As voters will head to polls this yr in additional than 50 nations, experts have raised the alarm over AI-generated political disinformation and the prospect that malicious actors will use generative AI and social media to intrude with elections. Meta has beforehand confronted criticism over its content material moderation insurance policies round previous elections—for instance, when it failed to prevent the January 6 rioters from organizing on its platforms.
Clegg defended the corporate’s efforts at stopping violent teams from organizing, however he additionally confused the issue of maintaining. “This can be a extremely adversarial house. You play Whack-a-Mole, candidly. You take away one group, they rename themselves, rebrand themselves, and so forth,” he stated.
Clegg argued that in contrast with 2016, the corporate is now “totally totally different” in relation to moderating election content material. Since then, it has eliminated over 200 “networks of coordinated inauthentic conduct,” he stated. The corporate now depends on reality checkers and AI know-how to determine undesirable teams on its platforms.
Earlier this yr, Meta introduced it could label AI-generated photos on Fb, Instagram, and Threads. Meta has began including seen markers to such photos, in addition to invisible watermarks and metadata within the picture file. The watermarks will probably be added to pictures created utilizing Meta’s generative AI programs or ones that carry invisible industry-standard markers. The corporate says its measures are consistent with best practices laid out by the Partnership on AI, an AI analysis nonprofit.
However on the identical time, Clegg admitted that instruments to detect AI-generated content material are nonetheless imperfect and immature. Watermarks in AI programs are usually not adopted industry-wide, and they’re simple to tamper with. They’re additionally laborious to implement robustly in AI-generated text, audio, and video.
In the end that ought to not matter, Clegg stated, as a result of Meta’s programs ought to be capable to catch and detect mis- and disinformation no matter its origins.
“AI is a sword and a protect on this,” he stated.
Clegg additionally defended the corporate’s resolution to permit adverts claiming that the 2020 US election was stolen, noting that these sorts of claims are frequent all through the world and saying it’s “not possible” for Meta to relitigate previous elections.
You may watch the total interview with Nick Clegg and MIT Know-how Assessment government editor Amy Nordrum beneath.
