Meta forms team to combat disinformation and AI abuse in EU parliamentary polls

Meta currently works with 26 independent fact-checking organizations in the EU

Brussels:

Facebook owner Meta will set up a team to tackle disinformation and the misuse of AI-generated content in the run-up to European Parliament elections in June, amid concerns about election interference and misleading AI-generated content.

The rapid development of generative artificial intelligence, which can create text, images and videos in seconds based on prompts, has raised concerns that the new technology could be used to disrupt major elections around the world this year.

The European Parliament elections will be held from June 6 to 9. Its 720 legislators work with EU governments to adopt new EU policies and laws.

“As the election approaches, we will activate our Election Operations Center to identify potential threats and implement mitigation measures in real time,” Marco Pancini, Meta’s director of EU affairs, said in a blog post.

Experts from the company’s intelligence, data science, engineering, research, operations, content policy and legal teams will focus on combating misinformation, addressing influence operations and addressing risks associated with the misuse of generated AI, he said.

Pancini said Meta currently works with 26 independent fact-checking organizations in the EU covering 22 languages, and will add three new partners in Bulgaria, France and Slovakia.

Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and 17 other tech companies agreed earlier this month to work together to prevent deceptive artificial intelligence content from interfering with elections around the world this year.

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