The pledge comes amid concerns over foreign meddling through disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks. Videos, photos and audio generated by widely accessible artificial intelligence tools to impersonate public figures, including politicians, have started spreading in Slovakia, the United Kingdom and the United States to manipulate voters. Parties in France and Poland have also used the technology to attack other politicians.
“This agreement will help to build trust with voters and increase their confidence in the electoral process,” said Commission Vice President Věra Jourová. “Elections should set the stage for the competition of ideas, not dirty manipulative methods such as AI deepfakes.”
Parties agreed not to produce, use or disseminate “any form of deceptive content using audio, images or video and generated with or without artificial intelligence to falsely or deceptively alter or fake candidates officials or any electoral stakeholder.” Such content will be allowed only when clearly labeled. Techniques like watermarks and technical fingerprints, known as provenance signals, are encouraged.
Platforms like Facebook, YouTube and TikTok must ensure political ads and AI deepfakes are clearly labeled under the EU’s new content moderation law, the Digital Services Act.
Companies including Google, Facebook owner Meta, and ChatGPT maker OpenAI in February also agreed to work together to create tools like watermarks and detection techniques to spot, label and debunk deepfakes.
Among the other 14 voluntary commitments in the charter are pledges not using fake accounts and bots to amplify political messages, and disclosing political ads, including through influencers. European political parties also promised not to promote content inciting violence, including against other candidates, or to push discriminatory messages.
