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Tech and AI companies sign accord to combat election-related deepfakes

xnftcrypto — Sat, 17 Feb 2024 13:00:51 +0000

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A group of 20 leading tech companies on Friday announced a joint commitment to combat AI misinformation in this year’s elections.

The industry is specifically targeting deepfakes, which can use deceptive audio, video and images to mimic key stakeholders in democratic elections or to provide false voting information.

Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon, IBM, Adobe and chip designer Arm all signed the accord. Artificial intelligence startups OpenAI, Anthropic and Stability AI also joined the group, alongside social media companies such as Snap, TikTok and X.

Tech platforms are preparing for a huge year of elections around the world that affect upward of four billion people in more than 40 countries. The rise of AI-generated content has led to serious election-related misinformation concerns, with the number of deepfakes that have been created increasing 900% year over year, according to data from Clarity, a machine learning firm.

Misinformation in elections has been a major problem dating back to the 2016 presidential campaign, when Russian actors found cheap and easy ways to spread inaccurate content across social platforms. Lawmakers are even more concerned today with the rapid rise of AI.

“There is reason for serious concern about how AI could be used to mislead voters in campaigns,” said Josh Becker, a Democratic state senator in California, in an interview. “It’s encouraging to see some companies coming to the table but right now I don’t see enough specifics, so we will likely need legislation that sets clear standards.”

Meanwhile, the detection and watermarking technologies used for identifying deepfakes haven’t advanced quickly enough to keep up. For now, the companies are just agreeing on what amounts to a set of technical standards and detection mechanisms.

They have a long way to go to effectively combat the problem, which has many layers. Services that claim to identify AI-generated text, such as essays, for instance, have been shown to exhibit bias against non-native English speakers. And it’s not much easier for images and videos.

Even if platforms behind AI-generated images and videos agree to bake in things like invisible watermarks and certain types of metadata, there are ways around those protective measures. Screenshotting can even sometimes dupe a detector.

Additionally, the invisible signals that some companies include in AI-generated images haven’t yet made it to many audio and video generators.

News of the accord comes a day after ChatGPT creator OpenAI announced Sora, its new model for AI-generated video. Sora works similarly to OpenAI’s image-generation AI tool, DALL-E. A user types out a desired scene and Sora will return a high-definition video clip. Sora can also generate video clips inspired by still images, and extend existing videos or fill in missing frames.

Participating companies in the accord agreed to eight high-level commitments, including assessing model risks, “seeking to detect” and address the distribution of such content on their platforms and providing transparency on those processes to the public. As with most voluntary commitments in the tech industry and beyond, the release specified that the commitments apply only “where they are relevant for services each company provides.”

“Democracy rests on safe and secure elections,” Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, said in a release. The accord reflects the industry’s effort to take on “AI-generated election misinformation that erodes trust,” he said.

Christina Montgomery, IBM’s chief privacy and trust officer, said in the release that in this key election year, “concrete, cooperative measures are needed to protect people and societies from the amplified risks of AI-generated deceptive content.”

WATCH: OpenAI unveils Sora

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Stock futures fall after Fed raises rates by most since 1994

xnftcrypto — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 11:49:23 +0000

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U.S. stock index futures were under pressure Thursday, putting the major averages to give up the solid gains made in the previous session.

Futures contracts tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.9%, or 590 points. S&P 500 futures were down 2.3%, while Nasdaq 100 futures shed 2.7%. All three futures contracts had earlier been trading in positive territory.

The 10-year Treasury yield resumed its massive June run on Thursday, reversing higher overnight. The 10-year yield was last around 3.44% after ending May at 2.84%.

Those moves come after the Federal Reserve implemented its largest interest rate hike since 1994 on Wednesday. The Fed raised rates by 75 basis points, as was widely anticipated.

“Clearly, today’s 75 basis point increase is an unusually large one, and I do not expect moves of this size to be common,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said at a news conference following the decision.

Stocks took a leg higher Wednesday after Powell said that a 50 or 75 basis point increase “seems most likely” at the next meeting in July, indicating the central bank’s commitment to fighting inflation. Powell did caution, however, that decisions will be made “meeting by meeting.”

The major averages ended the session higher, with the Dow and S&P 500 both snapping five-day losing streaks. The 30-stock benchmark added about 304 points, or 1%, while the S&P 500 advanced 1.46%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was the relative outperformer, rising 2.5%.

However, market sentiment appeared to sour once again Thursday as other central banks around the globe adopted more aggressive policy stances.

The Swiss National Bank overnight raised rates for the first time in 15 years. The Bank of England was set on Thursday to raise rates for the fifth straight time.

“Central banks in Switzerland and Hungary hiked rates by more than anticipated (while Brazil hiked inline and Taiwan raised actually a bit less), continuing the trend of aggressive policy tightening globally (the BOE is expected to increase rates in less than two hours while the world piles pressure on the BOJ to defend its 25bp target),” wrote Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge.

“Meanwhile, gas prices are climbing in Europe as Russia dials back supplies further, creating increased inflationary pressures for the ECB. The combination of central bank tightening and upward pressures on energy costs is pushing yields higher around the world, undercutting equity sentiment,” he said.

Tech shares moved lower in premarket trading after a bounce on Wednesday, with Tesla, PayPal, Nvidia, Amazon and Netflix all down more than 3%.

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The major averages entered Thursday’s session down for the week and well below record levels.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite are both in bear market territory, down roughly 21% and 32% from their all-time highs in January and November, respectively. The Dow, meantime, is 17% below its Jan. 5 all-time intraday high.

Rampant inflation, which is at the highest level in 40 years, has weighed on the major averages, as have fears around slowing economic growth and the possibility of a recession.

Morgan Stanley chief U.S. equity strategist Michael Wilson warned that the inflation problem won’t be solved overnight.

“It also raises the risk of a recession because you’re bringing forward rate hikes even faster, and I don’t think it’s going to help the bond market,” he said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.”

Economic data out Thursday includes weekly jobless claims numbers, with economists surveyed by Dow Jones forecasting a 220,000 print. Housing starts will also be released, while Adobe and Kroger will report quarterly updates.

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