After a perported edited picture of the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak holding a pint at the Great Britain Beer festival surfaced online, experts have called for an immediate steps to regulate the use of artificial intelligence-generated images in politics.
The experts explained that, the said picture was altered from real shot, in which Rishi Sunak appeared to have grabbed a pint from a taven as the person behind him looks unperturbed.
They further expounded that, the controversy was a depiction of what might happen in the upcoming 2024 election.
According to a Computer Science professor at the Southampton University, Wendy Hall, artificial intelligence stands as a dangerous opposition to democratic mechanisms.
“I think the use of digital technologies including AI is a threat to our democratic processes. It should be top of the agenda on the AI risk register with two major elections in the UK and the US looming large next year.”
Professor Wendy Hall.
Professor Faten Ghosn of Essex University has admonished political activists to educate their followers on the use of augmented photographs in the duties.
She further drew inspirations from Yvette Clarke, a US representative who have been attempting to modify legislations, so that political advertisements would disclose to voters, if they featured AI-generated content.
“If politicians use AI in any form they need to ensure that it carries some kind of mark that informs the public.”
Professor Faten Ghosn.
Additionally, University of Warwick’s Professor of Information Systems and Managements, Shweta Singh, immediate regulations need to be taken before the use of AI for negative purposes get out of hand.
“We need a set of ethical principles which can assure and reassure the users of these new technologies that the news they are reading is trustworthy. We need to act on this now, as it is impossible to imagine fair and impartial elections if such regulations don’t exist. It’s a serious concern and we are running out of time.”
Shweta Singh, Professor of Information Systems and Managements at University of Warwick.
Moreover, Labour MP for Hull East Karl Turner has apologized to the general public and the person in question for posting an augmented picture of him on social media.
According to statement released by the Conservative party, Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden has characterized the picture as “unacceptable,” as he responds to criticisms.
“I think that the Labour leader should disown this and Labour MPs who have retweeted this or shared this should delete the image, it is clearly misleading.”
deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden.
Though, it was unclear if the picture has been tempered, with the aid of artificial intelligence softwares, AI editing tools have aided easy creations of convincing false text, photos, and sounds.
The caution adds to the rise in political discontents over unregulated AI. “The real question is, how can anyone know if a photo is a deep fake,” Darren Jones, the Labour Chair of the business Select Committee said in a social media post.
He also said, if Karl Turner shared a picture that seemed authentic to me, I wouldn’t hold it against him.
“What is your department doing to tackle deep fake photos, especially in advance of the next election?” Jones stated in response to criticism from the science secretary, Michelle Donelan.
To regulate the use of AI, influential artificial intelligence firms have consented to putting in place regulations and mechanisms for material generated with AI.
In a meeting with the U.S President Joe Biden, month ago, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and ChatGPT creator OpenAI consented to an array of new protections, which included adopting watermarking for AI-produced visual and audio output.
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