AI Tag

21 May WITNESS Raises Concerns to Meta Oversight Board on Generative AI in Elections

News and Events, Tech and Advocacy | WITNESS

On 7 May 2026, WITNESS submitted a public comment to Meta’s Oversight Board, an independent body that reviews Meta’s content moderation decisions, in response to a case involving an AI-generated video of a prominent Hungarian politician posted ahead of Hungary’s recent elections. Although the Oversight Board is no longer reviewing this case as the video has since been removed, WITNESS submission provides valuable insights on the use of generative AI in the electoral contexts.   The case centered on an eight-second video appearing to depict Péter Magyar, now the Prime Minister of Hungary and then an opposition candidate, expressing frustration over the use of robocalls in political campaigns. Posted on Facebook in November 2025, when Magyar was still the country’s main opposition leader, the video appeared to be AI-generated and raised broader concerns about how synthetic media can shape electoral discourse and distort the information environment. The content circulated during the 2026 Hungarian elections highlighted the escalating challenge posed by synthetic media in high-stakes political contexts, where AI was used to amplify inflammatory narratives within an increasingly saturated information environment. By weaponizing geopolitical anxieties surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, political campaigns deployed AI-generated content to appeal to voters’ fears, including

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14 Nov WITNESS calls on India to develop an innovative, interoperable and effective AI Transparency regulations

News and Events, Tech and Advocacy | WITNESS

On November 6, WITNESS submitted comments to the Ministry of Electronic and Information Technology (MeitY) in response to the Draft IT Amendment Rules “in relation to synthetically generated information”.  WITNESS welcomes the government’s recognition of the growing impact of AI-generated content. However, we caution that the proposed framework remains too broad and platform-centric to achieve genuine transparency or accountability.  This current amendment provides the potential for over-broad content takedowns that could stifle freedom of expression, arts, satire, and journalism. Drawing on nearly a decade of work at the intersection of AI transparency, detection, provenance, and human rights, WITNESS believes India can lead globally by creating a dedicated, risk-based AI Transparency Framework aligned with international best practices. Effective governance must move beyond simplistic “AI or not-AI” binaries and instead focus on how content is created, disclosed, and used. The goal should be process transparency, not punitive or reactive content moderation. WITNESS Executive Director Sam Gregory notes:  “We cannot regulate AI by only regulating intermediaries; we must build the infrastructure of trust through transparency, provenance and accountability through every stage of the AI pipeline.”  We also echo the perspective of India’s leading digital rights organization, the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), which has

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European Parliament

30 Oct Navigating Human Rights in the EU AI Act: WITNESS’s Call for Thoughtful Transparency

News and Events, Tech and Advocacy | WITNESS

In September, the European Commission began implementing Article 50 of the EU AI Act, the EU’s first comprehensive law regulating artificial intelligence, by launching a public consultation to draft guidelines and a Code of Practice (CoP) on AI transparency. The outcome will shape how AI tools, from chatbots and generative media to emotion-recognition, biometric categorization and deepfake technologies, inform users when they are interacting with or viewing AI-generated content. In its official submission, WITNESS called on the Commission to ensure that the forthcoming Transparency CoP reflects the complex, multimodal nature of generative AI and its impact on accessibility, privacy, and the potential for misuse by governments. For more than two decades, WITNESS has helped communities use video and technology to defend human rights. Over the past eight years, the organization has observed how artificial intelligence can both empower truth and amplify disinformation. WITNESS works to ensure that policies for transparency and disclosure around real and synthetic content are grounded in human rights and respond to the needs of critical frontline information actors like journalists and human rights defenders. Since 2020, WITNESS has also been actively involved in Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), shaping authenticity and provenance infrastructure so

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31 Jul The EU GPAI Code of Practice: Progress Made, But the Real Test Lies Ahead

News and Events, Tech and Advocacy | WITNESS

The European Commission published the final version of the General Purpose AI Code of Practice on July 10th. The code, which providers of GPAI models will be signing on a voluntary basis, is responsible for establishing measures that providers can follow in order to achieve higher compliance with the AI Act’s rules for GPAI. While the AI Act rules will enter into application on August 2nd, 2025, the Commission has also established a 2 year grace period for models that are already on the market. At WITNESS, our priority has been to ensure the Code of Practice upholds transparency in a way that facilitates AI detection and content authenticity, preserves the information environment, and includes robust rights protections. The published version of the CoP ended up covering three main subjects: (a) Transparency, (b) Copyright and (c) Safety and Security.  “The final version of the Code of Practice represents a welcome and more balanced version of the interests at stake than the previous drafts,” said Bruna Martins dos Santos, Policy and Advocacy Manager at WITNESS, “We continue to be concerned that the interests of the private sector were prioritised over civil society’s requests to strengthen fundamental rights protections. We look forward

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10 Jul New Global Benchmark Sets Standard for Truly Effective AI Detection in the Age of Deepfakes

News and Events, Tech and Advocacy | WITNESS

WITNESS launches TRIED Benchmark to promote the development of AI detection tools that support the preservation of truth and authenticity in the era of evolving synthetic media. WITNESS today announces the release of its new report, TRIED: Truly Innovative and Effective AI Detection Benchmark, a groundbreaking framework to evaluate and improve AI detection tools amid the rising threat of generative AI and deceptive synthetic media. Based on case submissions from WITNESS’ Deepfake Rapid Response Force’s (DRRF), the expertise of its AI detection specialists, as well as global consultations with journalists, fact-checkers and leading technologists, WITNESS endeavours to shape the AI detection space for effectiveness and innovation.  “We’re in the middle of great leaps in the realism of AI generation, with tools like Google’s Veo. However, detection tools for deceptive AI have not kept pace and are not in the hands of those who need them most. We must ensure that tools are built that meet the needs of those on the frontlines of truth globally,” said Sam Gregory, Executive Director at WITNESS, “low-quality or faulty detection that doesn’t work globally, and that is not easily explainable to the public, makes it easy to deny the real, and share AI falsehoods”

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