The United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has called for enhanced measures and global standards to detect and eliminate AI-generated deepfakes, reported Reuters.
These digitally manipulated images, videos, and audios pose significant threats to the integrity of elections and financial systems, according to ITU’s latest report released during the ‘AI for Good Summit’ in Geneva.
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The organisation advocated for the implementation of robust standards to tackle manipulated multimedia. It also recommended that content distributors, such as social media platforms, employ digital verification tools to authenticate images and videos before they are disseminated.
ITU Standardization Bureau Study Groups Department chief Bilel Jamoussi was quoted by the news agency as saying: “Trust in social media has dropped significantly because people don’t know what’s true and what’s fake.” He noted that addressing deepfakes is a major challenge due to Generative AI’s capability to produce realistic multimedia.
Digital governance research firm Digital Medusa founder Dr. Farzaneh Badiei said that there is a need for a global strategy to tackle the issue, noting the absence of a unified international body dedicated to detecting manipulated content. “If we have patchworks of standards and solutions, then the harmful deepfake can be more effective,” she told Reuters.
Currently, the ITU is working on developing standards for watermarking videos, which constitute 80% of internet traffic. The measures may include adding provenance data such as the creator’s identity and timestamps.
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By GlobalDataITU is a specialised agency of the United Nations for digital technologies. Headquartered in Geneva with regional offices worldwide, the agency comprises 194 Member States and more than 1,000 companies, universities, and organisations.
