Microsoft did not see significant use of artificial intelligence during the European parliamentary elections to create disinformation campaigns, the company’s president said in an interview with Reuters.
Brad Smith was in Stockholm to announce Microsoft’s plan to invest 33.7 billion Swedish crowns ($3.21 billion) to develop its cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure in Sweden over a two-year period.
“We need to recognize the risks that AI can create in the context of creating abusive content, and one form of abusive content would be AI-generated deep fakes,” said Brad Smith.
AI and AI-generated fakes, or “deepfakes,” are increasingly used in elections elsewhere in the world, including India, the United States, Pakistan and Indonesia.
In India, “deepfake” videos have gone viral, showing two of India’s biggest Bollywood actors criticizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asking people to vote for the opposition Congress party in the country’s general election.
Last month, the European Union’s disinformation team debunked a Russian-language video posted on Google-owned YouTube that claimed citizens were fleeing dictatorship in EU member Poland and seeking refuge in Belarus, close ally of Moscow.
European Parliament elections will be held from June 6-9, while the bloc’s landmark rules on AI come into force this month, setting a potential global benchmark for a technology used in business and life daily.
Microsoft has trained European Parliament candidates to monitor the situation, Smith said.
“We haven’t seen any aggressive efforts to try to exploit this election,” Mr. Smith said. “They are not yet finished, so we must not declare victory.
“We’re just seeing that the Russians are focused on the Olympics,” Smith said, adding that Microsoft will release a report on the subject later Monday.
The International Olympic Committee banned the Russian Olympic Committee in October for recognizing regional Olympic councils in the Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine, namely Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. (Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm, editing by Louise Heavens)
