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AI Politics

Tech Companies Plan To Sign Accord To Combat AI-Generated Election Trickery (go.com) 82

Posted by BeauHD from the it's-a-start dept.
At least six major tech companies, including Adobe, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and TikTok, plan to sign an agreement this week that details how they'll attempt to stop the use of AI-generated election misinformation and deepfakes. ABC News reports: "In a critical year for global elections, technology companies are working on an accord to combat the deceptive use of AI targeted at voters," said a joint statement from several companies Tuesday. "Adobe, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, TikTok and others are working jointly toward progress on this shared objective and we hope to finalize and present details on Friday at the Munich Security Conference."

The companies declined to share details of what's in the agreement. Many have already said they're putting safeguards on their own generative AI tools that can manipulate images and sound, while also working to identify and label AI-generated content so that social media users know if what they're seeing is real.
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Tech Companies Plan To Sign Accord To Combat AI-Generated Election Trickery More

Tech Companies Plan To Sign Accord To Combat AI-Generated Election Trickery

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  • Warm Fuzzies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TwistedGreen ( 80055 ) on Tuesday February 13, 2024 @10:32PM (#64237954)

    This makes me feel much better.

    Especially the part about the companies declining to share details of what's in the agreement.

    • Re:Warm Fuzzies (Score:5, Funny)

      by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Tuesday February 13, 2024 @10:38PM (#64237962)

      Don't you worry your little head about it! We got it covered, trust us!

      We will make sure we're the only ones manipulating any elections around here! Guaranteed!

      • Why would you care? Voters don't really affect the outcome in American elections.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 )

          Voters don't really affect the outcome in American elections.

          I beg to differ. In 2016, corporate America wanted Jeb Bush.

          Donald Trump was elected by people who live in trailer parks. I know because I am related to many of them.

          • This is typical of representative democracy, i.e. vote for your favourite media figures to lead your country. It's so easily corruptable & beholden to media corporations. They make a tonne of money from elections while deciding, on the electorates' behalves, who's going through to the next round of "Who wants to be president?"(TM)*

            In terms of politics & governance, it's like a multiple choice quiz where the options are chosen for you & there are no right answers. We need more rational kinds o

            • > This is also what makes it so easy to point to other democracies, whose leadership you don't agree with, & claim that their elections aren't fair. On many occasions, heavily criticised elections have been more open & fair (as monitored & reported on by independent & relatively impartial election observers, e.g. the ODIHR) than those in the USA.

              This has sadly been true for many years. We don't manage to do many of the things we require of third world elections when the UN/others shows u

          • That is a good point, and Trump is an outlier, due to being pretty uncontrollable, but as a general rule Americans can vote for either a republican or a democrat and then the people with the money get the policies they want.
            Corporate America would have been pretty happy with Hilary I would have thought.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jmccue ( 834797 )

          I guess this needs to be said, the main issue with presidential elections is the artificial limit on the House of Representatives. This will also help with the deadlock in Congress. The limit of 435 Reps skews the numbers.

          House of Representatives is suppose to be 1 Rep per a fixed number of people. But Congress put a hard limit of 435, that means Small States have more people per Rep than Large States.

          For example, Wyoming has 1 Rep for 480900 people.

          California has 1 rep per 736000 people. To be fair and

          • That's one of of the many many things wrong with the America system of government.
            It was designed in the late 18th century by some wealthy men who didn't really trust voters and wanted to control the outcome themselves.
            In my view you guys need to have really serious look at reforming the whole thing from the ground up but you won't because the people in control would lose control.
    • It's Tethics(TM). Have you sign the pledge yet? If not, why not? Once you've signed, you can seen the details that you've agreed to. C'mon, don't be a thumbass!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Entrope ( 68843 )

      They don't want to disclose the techniques they'll use to watermark AI-generated content lest people figure out how to work around that.

      They refused to confirm or deny that their software is called SIXFINGER, or that they will provide a digital agent who will hunt down faked text and images, repeatedly saying "My name is Inigo Montoya. You deepfaked my father. Prepare to die!"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        Are they TRYING to encourage people to switch to open-source LLMs and diffusion models?

        Because this is how you convince normies to switch to open-source LLMs and diffusion models.

    • Right? Like this is some kind of binding agreement with some kind of punitive mechanism if they should fail to adhere to it. Yeah, I see that happening. lol.

  • A novel concept, I know.

  • Thanks for the heads up. Pretty sure we already knew though.

  • Oh no, the censorship! Who will think of the censorship!

  • How about our elected officials?

    As in: if election trickery is happening, the tech companies are on the hook for it.

    Why do we always have to rely on the industry promising to do right - only to find out later they didn't work for anybody's interests but their own anyway? We elected people to regulate them!

    • Who's on the ballot who would actually regulate any industry? You are aware that you can technically just choose which industries get to fleece you by deciding for or against the champion of these or that industries, right?

      Maybe we should try to start a Kickstarter or Gofundme, maybe if we all chip in we might be able to at least buy one congresscritter for, you know, "the people".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        Who's on the ballot who would actually regulate any industry?

        They do exist ... but you've been conditioned to irrationally hate them.

        • Oh, so it should be easy. The politicians I hate irrationally are the good ones.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by narcc ( 412956 )

            If by "the good ones" you mean politicians who are actually interested in regulating various industries, then yes. They're few and far between, but if you want more we need to get money out of politics. That means things like publicly funded elections and requiring congress critters to put securities in a blind trust.

            • Yep, that's what happened over here. Any party that gets more than (IIRC) 2% of the votes gets its campaigning expenses reimbursed.

              Back when the Socialists here introduced that law in the 70s, there was the outcry of the century. By now, I think, a lot of people realized what it means.

    • How about our elected officials?

      As in: if election trickery is happening, the tech companies are on the hook for it.

      Why do we always have to rely on the industry promising to do right - only to find out later they didn't work for anybody's interests but their own anyway? We elected people to regulate them!

      The people we elect go directly to whatever industry needs to be regulated to pick the regulatory officials. These officials then funnel messages and money back to the elected officials to make sure the industry is regulated "fairly." i.e. - only impose egregious regulation against the upcoming new players, big players with deep pockets can do whatever unless somehow caught in a public scandal. Then they should appear before a congressional hearing to be spanked publicly for our pleasure, before going back

  • BS (Score:2)

    by nicubunu ( 242346 )

    They are paying lip service, pretend that they will do something but effectively won't do anything of significance

  • If we can put serial numbers on dollar bills (Score:3)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @04:41AM (#64238302)
    The we can implement paper ballots with serial numbers, with a tear-off receipt so voters can verify their vote online
    • Except it's illegal in the us to violate the secrecy of a vote, which that would do.

      • Not necessarily. Using asymmetric crypto, you could verify your vote using a private key (the tear-off recept) without disclosing your identity. That way, the vote is both secret and verifiable.

        • Except having the tear off receipt discloses your identity.

          • How? How would anybody know which receipt belongs to which person?

            • "Nice house you have here. Shame if it burned down. You know what''d ensure that it didn't? Voting for . One of my boys will be by on election day to scan you receipt"

              • it's illegal in the us to violate the secrecy of a vote

                you could verify your vote without disclosing your identity.

                having the tear off receipt discloses your identity.

                How?

                Nice house you have here.

                Not only does that not answer the question, it is a completely different topic.

                If you know where my house lives, you already know my identity. It is not disclosed by the receipt. So, topic failed.

                In addition, there is no way to verify that the receipt was mine. Only I know that. So, topic failed again.

                On top of that, you assume a threat model with an existing vulnerability that has exploits that make a miniscule influence on an election look, let's call it unambitious. So, not only did you thoroughly f

  • Re-run of big tech's 2020 election manipulation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tiqui ( 1024021 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @04:41AM (#64238304)

    In 2020, BigTech censored the Hunter Biden laptop story. They all ran with the narrative, fed to them by the FBI (which we now know had employees embedded in firms like Twitter) that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation even though the FBI (the guys pumping that narrative) knew full-well it was real (which we now know from the government's own documents - the FBI got the laptop in 2019 and verified its authenticity). Everything on that laptop was genuine, including details of financial deals between Hunter and the Chinese and the Ukranians and the Russians. In one of the 2020 debates, after Trump raised the issue, Biden boldly lied about all of this and his lies were reinforced by the media and Big Tech.

    In every election in the USA, there are BILLIONS of dollars at stake for many interested parties. Just consider the potential differences in multi-billion dollar defense contracts which are affected by the choice of a President. There are also numerous well-paid careers affected - most of the upper-middle class and above people working in the Washington DC area have their careers affected by politics.

    This is all FACTUAL and anybody anonymously flagging this post "troll" is highly dishonest and has no actual facts.

    What is my OPINION (not facts to be refuted, but also not trolling) is that there are people all over the world who are murdered every year over a hundred thousand dollars or less (estates, insurance policies, etc) so it's no stretch to presume that SOME people might be willing to do some mighty bad stuff for millions or billions of dollars - and that includes interfering in elections. The seemingly permanent government employees in the federal government's national security, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies who seem to have become quite arrogant over the decades apparently had no qualms at all about settung-up shop inside these corporations and influencing the way they influenced the 2020 election. This is nearly textbook fascism. The well-documented 2020 entanglement between big tech and the DOJ/FBI to manipulate and mislead the voters should NEVER be repeated, no matter which political party THINKS it's in charge. Given that only Twitter came out with document dumps and directly admitted what was done (while government docs exposed the collusion at the other tech firms) we should all assume this new effort to "protect" our elections is actually just a continuation of the policy of corrupting them. BigTech cares a great deal about its money, and its money is affected by who is in the House, the Senate, and the White House. Only a fool would imagine that they will pass-up the chance to affect the results, having already done it before.

  • Yep, other countries will do it for not much money. Per the past, someone with a felt marker, or good with photoshop can print modified brochures and emails. Look up celebrity poon - it does not cost much to substitute another face. Parody is lawful, and one would hope the big players also accept this. Faked voiceovers are easy, usually the candidate said the exact opposite many years ago. I think the next batch of ads should be for Alzheimer's cures, where each candidate lookalike promises they are unfit

  • Given his recent comments about abandoning Ukraine, supporting Russian use of Starlink while resisting it for Ukraine, his support of freedom of speech for the right wing and not so much for anyone else, and his general dickishness...

    I suspect Twitter will only take the minimum preformative actions required for plausible deniability and let election-related disinformation campaigns for the right run rampant.

  • Election trickery: true facts we don't like, like Hunter's laptop, Wuhan lab, ...

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