SEOUL — South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Monday known as faux news and disinformation based mostly on AI and digital expertise threats to democracy, as some officers attending a world summit accused Russia and China of conducting malicious propaganda campaigns.
Speaking on the opening of the Summit for Democracy being held in Seoul, Yoon mentioned nations had an obligation to share experiences and knowledge in order that synthetic intelligence and expertise could possibly be employed to advertise democracy.
“Fake news and disinformation based on artificial intelligence and digital technology not only violates individual freedom and human rights but also threatens democratic systems,” Yoon mentioned.
South Korea is internet hosting the third Summit for Democracy convention, an initiative of US President Joe Biden aimed toward discussing methods to cease democratic backsliding and erosion of rights and freedoms.
Digital threats to democracy, and the way expertise can promote democracy and common human rights, are anticipated to be the principle agenda of the three-day conferences, attended by representatives from greater than 30 nations, starting from Costa Rica to the United States and Ghana.
“As authoritarian and repressive regimes deploy technologies to undermine democracy and human rights, we need to ensure that technology sustains and supports democratic values and norms,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed the summit.
Blinken later mentioned 2024 was an “extraordinary election year” to spotlight dangers of disinformation and falsehoods in our on-line world. He additionally repeated Washington’s accusations that Russia and China are behind world campaigns aimed toward manipulating data.
Some European officers additionally accused Russia of conducting disinformation campaigns utilizing AI.
“The only thing more gruesome than the Russian actions during their ongoing invasion of Ukraine is the disgusting web of lies spun by Russian propaganda, accelerated by social media, deep fake techniques and omnipresent bots,” mentioned Robert Kupiecki, undersecretary of state at Poland’s overseas ministry.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied accusations of spreading false or deceptive data.
A spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington had mentioned it was “typical bias and double standard to allege that the pro-China contents and reports are ‘disinformation’, and to call the anti-China ones ‘true information’.”
Hours earlier than the summit began, North Korea fired a number of short-range ballistic missiles into the ocean for the primary time in two months in its newest present of drive.
The convention additionally kicked off simply after Russian President Vladimir Putin was declared victor in a file post-Soviet landslide in a presidential election on Sunday.
The consequence means Putin, who rose to energy in 1999, is about to start out a brand new six-year time period that can see him overtake Josef Stalin and turn out to be Russia’s longest-serving chief in additional than 200 years if he completes it.
A White House National Security Council spokesperson criticized the election and mentioned they had been “obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”
Putin informed reporters he regarded Russia’s election as democratic and mentioned protests organized by supporters of opposition chief Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic jail final month, in opposition to him had no impact on the election’s consequence.
The democracy summit can be being attended by British Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden, who mentioned democracy confronted threats on a number of fronts, together with cyberattackers disrupting campaigns, populists embracing falsehoods, and “autocrats holding sham elections.”
Blinken mentioned Washington was releasing the primary steering of its type for tech firms to assist forestall assaults on human rights defenders on-line.
In addition, he mentioned on the summit {that a} half-dozen extra nations, together with South Korea and Japan, had been becoming a member of a US-led crackdown on the misuse of economic adware to surveil journalists or human rights defenders. — Reuters
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
