Author: WITNESS

20 May WITNESS welcomes new board members

News and Events | WITNESS

WITNESS is pleased to welcome Irene Mwendwa, Raffi Krikorian, and Suzanne Stoller to its Board of Directors. Bringing experience across technology, human rights, public policy, organizational leadership, and advocacy, the new board members join WITNESS at a critical moment for the future of information integrity, digital rights, and civic participation worldwide. Irene Mwendwa is a lawyer, researcher, and advocate working to advance safer digital futures through human rights and technology policy. Her work spans collaborations across civil society, government, and the private sector, with a focus on strengthening legal and policy frameworks related to elections, technology, and digital rights. Rooted in principles of justice, integrity, and collective liberation, Mwendwa’s work has contributed to shaping more equitable approaches to technology governance and public policy. Raffi Krikorian has spent his career working at the intersection of technology and society, with a focus on ensuring powerful technologies serve the public interest. He currently serves as Chief Technology Officer at Mozilla, where he leads efforts to advance open-source AI and strengthen human agency online. Throughout his career, Krikorian has held leadership roles across the tech and civic sectors, including as CTO of Emerson Collective and the Democratic National Committee, as well as leadership positions

10 Mar Meta Oversight Board Decision on AI-Generated Conflict Video Validates WITNESS’ Long-Standing Warnings, Now Meta Must Act

Today, the Meta Oversight Board, which reviews Meta’s content moderation decisions and makes policy recommendations to Meta for Facebook and Instagram, published its decision concerning an AI-generated video purporting to show missile damage in Haifa during the June 2025 Israel-Iran war, widely shared across social media. ”This decision could not come at a more urgent moment. As conflict continues across the region, the same systemic failures the Board identifies are playing out in real time, and Meta’s response to these recommendations will determine whether this ruling has any real impact,” said Mahsa Alimardani, Associate Director for Technology Threats and Opportunities at WITNESS. The Board has the power to overturn Meta’s decisions on individual content but can only make policy recommendations to the company, which it can choose to accept or reject. It has exercised both powers in this case: reversing Meta’s original decision to leave the content up without a High Risk AI label, and issued several recommendations aimed at strengthening how the platform handles AI-generated content. These include creating a new Community Standard for AI-generated content and improving labeling pathways for AI content during crises. The decision also directly cites WITNESS’ analysis of how internet blackouts during the Iran-Israel

02 Mar WITNESS Named Beneficiary of Proton Lifetime Charity Fundraiser

News and Events, Tech and Advocacy | WITNESS

WITNESS is thrilled and honored to announce we have been named as a beneficiary of the Proton Lifetime Charity Fundraiser organized by the Proton Foundation, the governing non-profit organization behind encrypted cloud storage Proton Drive. As a leader in privacy and security, we are delighted to have the generous support of the Proton community behind us – fueling our mission to protect truth and secure accountability. At WITNESS, we help people everywhere use video and technology to protect video evidence and ensure we can trust what we see in a world increasingly shaped by AI. For years, we’ve worked to prepare human rights defenders globally for the realities of AI and emerging technologies. While we aren’t new to this space, the landscape we work in and the challenges we face are ever-evolving and the stakes have never been higher. Our partnership with Proton will help ensure WITNESS can continue to meet current needs and prepare for what’s next. Thank you to the Proton Foundation for its generous support and partnership. Proton is built on the idea of a better internet where privacy is the default. You can learn more about the work of Proton and the Proton Foundation here.

27 Feb WITNESS Submits Public Comment to Meta Oversight Board on AI-Generated Sexual Exploitation

News and Events | WITNESS

Meta ignored recommendations from its Oversight Board on the last AI non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) case and continues to fail in addressing the structural issues with technology-facilitated gender-based violence. WITNESS has submitted a public comment to the Meta Oversight Board on non-consensual AI sexualized impersonation. This case exposes what happens when a platform is told to fix a problem, documents its refusal, and the predicted harm materializes. In 2024, the Oversight Board recommended that Meta overhaul how it handles AI-generated NCII, citing WITNESS twice in its decision following our 2024 submission. The Board told Meta to move its prohibition on sexualized manipulated media into the policy designed for sexual exploitation, to treat AI-generated content as a signal that consent is absent, to update its outdated terminology, and to stop relying on media coverage as a proxy for whether a victim has been harmed. Meta declined the most important of these recommendations and deferred the rest. Its own published response states that it “do[es] not expect to replace ‘derogatory’ with ‘non-consensual’” and “do[es] not expect that this will result in moving the prohibition.” These are not pending changes. They are documented refusals. “This case highlights a structural failure to treat NCII

18 Feb India’s Synthetic Media Rules Build Enforcement on the Wrong Foundation

News and Events, Tech and Advocacy | WITNESS

On 20 February 2026, India’s Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026 come into force. The rules, notified by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on 10 February, introduce India’s first regulations for synthetic media (referred to as “synthetically generated information” or SGI in the rules). They mandate labelling, provenance metadata, automated verification by platforms, and drastically shorten the time platforms have to remove flagged content. In November 2025, WITNESS submitted comments to MeitY on the draft rules after consulting with local civil society. We drew on nearly a decade of global research and advocacy on synthetic media, content provenance, and human rights. We made five specific recommendations. Some were partially adopted: the rules now apply only to audio and visual content (not all AI outputs), routine AI-assisted tasks like color correction, noise reduction, transcription, and formatting are explicitly excluded, and an impractical requirement to cover 10% of content with a visible label has been removed. These are genuine improvements, and we welcome the government’s responsiveness to civil society input. However, the final rules contain critical gaps that were not addressed, and introduce new provisions that were not part of the public consultation.