Tech

The European Union gets serious about ‘deepfakes’ and fake accounts

According to a document seen by Reuters, the European Comissionwhich represents the executive power of the European Union, plans to promote regulations that could impose heavy fines on companies that do not properly address the fight against fake accounts and the issue of deepfakesthose deep learning video-based fakes that sometimes masquerade as genuine material to defame or attribute a fake quote to a person.

Tech companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter will have to take action to combat deepfakes and fake accounts on their own platforms if they don’t want to end up facing hefty fines, or at least that’s what the updated code of practice of the European Union to combat disinformation within the borders of the community entity, which would be published on Thursday of this week.

The code of practice, which was introduced in 2018 on a voluntary basis, will become a co-regulation scheme with shared responsibility between regulators and signatories. His update details examples of manipulative behavior such as deepfakes and fake accounts that code of practice signatories will need to address.

The document seen by Reuters allegedly says that “relevant signatories shall adopt, enforce and implement clear policies regarding impermissible manipulative behaviors and practices on their services, based on the latest evidence on the behaviors and tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) employed by malicious actors”.

In addition to your update, the code of practices will become part of the Digital Services Law of the European Union, which has been agreed this year by the 27 member countries of the community entity in order to combat disinformation. Companies that sign the code of practice will have six months to implement the measures against deepfakesadvertising with disinformation and false accounts and they can be fined up to 6% of their global turnover in case of not complying with the obligations acquired. Companies will also need to provide more transparency in political advertising.

In addition to the fight against deepfakes and disinformation through the media that we have seen over the last few years, the new rules would be aimed at combating disinformation coming from pro-Russian channels due to the invasion of Ukraine.

It seems that the European Union, through its executive power, has made the fight against disinformation one of its priorities and for this it will not hesitate to demand the maximum from companies so that they carry out their mission correctly.

Image: Pixabay

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