The power of artificial intelligence is great. It can engineer consciousness and greatly influence people’s opinions and perceptions. Like any powerful tool, it is desirable to have supervision and regulation systems. The rules of the game have changed with content that combines video, image and sound to the point of undetectable detection capabilities to strengthen or harm candidates while creating speeches, events or images that did not exist and were not created. This thing is not science fiction, in fact it already happened.
For example, the leader of the Progressive Party in Slovakia, Michal Šimčka, lost power when a recording was released in which he was allegedly trying to bribe a journalist to help him buy votes. Until it turned out that his voice was faked by AI and the recorded conversation never took place, Szymczka, who had previously led in the polls, lost the election.
The distribution of fake news, recordings and videos in which a character is seen saying things they never said, the so-called “deep fake”, are becoming more and more common and become commonplace in every election campaign. Because of this, there is an urgent need for regulation that will limit the threat to our freedom of choice and the public’s ability to make decisions based on reliable and correct information.
The firm of Weinberger Bartenthal & Co., which specializes in artificial intelligence, is the first pioneer on the subject, when it wrote a bill that would define an explicit disclosure obligation for any use of artificial intelligence in propaganda publications, specifying the method used, prohibiting the use of artificial intelligence to disrupt, edit or create content in propaganda Elections without the duty of disclosure will define sanctions for those who violate the law – heavy fines and criminal proceedings.
This is how the bill reads: “A person shall not publish an election ad/post/video that includes content created or modified using artificial intelligence, unless the propaganda includes a clear and prominent explanation that artificial intelligence was used and also includes a logo.”
Attorney Yanor Bartenthal from Weinberger Bartenthal & Co. stated that “it is time to activate tools that will protect our ability to choose and block possibilities of interference in thinking, drawing conclusions and choosing our elected officials with such foreign influence. It’s no secret that artificial intelligence is increasingly filling our lives. We must change with progress and adapt the legal system to the new situation.”