Welcome to South Africa’s first AI election
Thanks to the efforts of Media Monitoring Africa and the IEC, Meta, TikTok and Google have committed to the fight against manipulated information
With about 40% of the world’s population voting in elections this year, manipulation of information using AI poses a huge threat to democracy. State and nonstate actors are developing strategies to restrict AI-generated audio, images and videos.
Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) and the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) have signed a framework of co-operation with social media platforms Meta, TikTok and Google that commits them to counter false information in the run-up to the May 29 election. “It is unusual to get them all to agree,” says MMA director William Bird. In practice it means those platforms agree to deal quickly with complaints from MMA or the IEC. “They have all the power,” says Bird...
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