FALCON POWERS – Here’s a look at some of the efforts in Europe to tackle disinformation and what voters should look out for before the June vote.
Concerns are growing regarding disinformation and artificial intelligence (AI) generated content ahead of the EU elections in June.
The European Commission published recommended measures in March for digital platforms with more than 45 million EU-based users per month “to mitigate systemic risks online that may impact the integrity of elections”.
In addition, many platforms committed to the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation “to address both misinformation and disinformation across their services,” a Commission spokesperson said.
Experts who studied previous elections in European countries noted that disinformation can take several forms with the main narratives targeting climate change, immigration, and support for Ukraine.
“Considering the very specific nature of the EU elections, we think that the situation will be broken down at the national level in most cases,” Tommaso Canetta, fact-checking vice director for the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), told Euronews Next.
“So, we expect the main disinformation narratives will have very national and local nuances”.
Roberta Schmid, managing editor for Germany and Austria for the US-based company NewsGuard which rates news sites, agrees that false claims regarding Ukrainian refugees and climate change policies are likely to be spread.
She also noticed that “a lot of the false claims are personal, meaning a lot of it is about specific politicians”.
Fact-checkers are looking at “the risk level” but also at “how much a claim spreads” to pick the ones they will be debunking.
Experts who studied previous elections in European countries noted that disinformation can take several forms with the main narratives targeting climate change, immigration, and support for Ukraine.
“Considering the very specific nature of the EU elections, we think that the situation will be broken down at the national level in most cases,” Tommaso Canetta, fact-checking vice director for the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), told Euronews Next.
“So, we expect the main disinformation narratives will have very national and local nuances”.
Roberta Schmid, managing editor for Germany and Austria for the US-based company NewsGuard which rates news sites, agrees that false claims regarding Ukrainian refugees and climate change policies are likely to be spread.
She also noticed that “a lot of the false claims are personal, meaning a lot of it is about specific politicians”.
Fact-checkers are looking at “the risk level” but also at “how much a claim spreads” to pick the ones they will be debunking.
Deepfake audio is the main concern when it comes to AI disinformation
Regarding AI, Schmid says that it’s “an additional risk on top of the risk that was already there”.
“Deepfakes has been, around for quite some time now. The big difference is that they’re getting better and better. And especially now there’s voice deepfakes that are really convincing,” she said.
Canetta adds that while generative AI made a technical leap in recent months, AI-generated images and videos aren’t good enough to offer entirely realistic outputs yet.
However, AI-generated audio can pass as real due to the lack of visual clues.
“It’s an issue for the average user to detect the artificial origin of the content,” Canetta said.
During the 2023 Slovakian elections, Michal Šimečka, leader of the Progressist party, was the victim of a disinformation campaign with a fake recording of him discussing vote-rigging with a journalist, according to multiple reports.
“This is tricky, because to debunk this kind of content, it requires time. So it can be potentially harmful for the elections,” Canetta added.
Most of the European political parties have signed a code of conduct for the elections pledging to “abstain from producing, using, or disseminating misleading content”.
