European political parties agreed Tuesday to avoid making and spreading unlabeled deepfakes ahead of the bloc’s June election as part of an EU charter on fair campaigning.
The majority of the EU’s political parties — such as the center right European People’s Party (EPP), center left Party of European Socialists (PES), and the right wing European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR) — signed a voluntary code of conduct ahead of the European election on June 6-9 during a ceremony at the Commission.
Far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) did not sign during the ceremony, but Gerolf Annemans, chair of the bureau of the ID party and member of the European Parliament, told POLITICO that ID has adhered to and supports the initiative. He added that the ID secretary-general was present.
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.
Jourová asked European political parties to push their own national members — such as Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party of Germany, Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice in Poland, French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance — to adhere to the charter.
A new European political advertising law separately came into force Tuesday, compelling online platforms like Meta to allow European political parties, groups and EU institutions to buy advertising across the bloc.
Facebook faced a backlash in the last EU election after blocking the bloc’s main institutions from advertising across borders because of measures to limit foreign influence. Europarties headquartered in Belgium, for example, could only target online voters in Belgium.
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