Meta to create team to tackle deepfakes in EU elections

Instagram and Facebook owner Meta will create a team to tackle deepfakes and disinformation in the run-up to the European Parliament elections in June.

The head of EU affairs at Meta, Marco Pancini, used a blog post to announce the social media giant’s fact-checking network which has been created to “identify potential threats and put specific mitigations in place,” when it comes to misinformation.

Year of elections: a deepfake threat on politics and business

At the end of last year, Meta announced it would require advertisers to disclose deepfake ads, and in the months between July and December 2023, it removed 430,000 ads in the EU that failed to carry a disclaimer.

Now for the EU elections, a team will also be on hand to debunk any misleading AI-generated content and prevent them from going live.

When it comes to user-created content, Meta will be adding a feature to label AI-generated video or audio, and it may apply penalties if accounts fail to do so.

If the team concludes that a digitally created or altered image, video, or audio content is made to maliciously deceive the public on a matter of importance, Meta says it may add a label, so people have more information and context.

Similar labelling will also be applied to usual posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, that could contribute to imminent violence, or that are intended to suppress voting. The team will also limit its distribution in Feed, so people are less likely to see it.

It will also label state-controlled media on its platforms so that users are aware when content is from a publication that may be under the editorial control of a government.

Pancini writes that after Meta applied stronger enforcements to Russian state-controlled media, including blocking them in the EU and demoting their posts globally, posting volumes on their pages went down 55% and engagement levels were down 94% compared to pre-ware levels, and more than half of all Russian state media assets had stopped posting altogether.