New Delhi | Jagran Technology Desk: Social media giant Facebook Inc. has tightened its policies for deepfakes and other types of doctored videos on its platform. The US-based social networking company had on Tuesday said that the company is working towards strengthening the policies to combat the manipulated content that spread misinformation among the people by looking like real.
The company will now remove a video if it spreads misinformation and misleads people into thinking that a subject in the video said words that they never actually said. Facebook will also remove those videos that are made through technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML) “merges, replaces or superimposes content on to a video, making it appear to be authentic.”
“We are strengthening our policy toward misleading manipulated videos that have been identified as deepfakes. While these videos are still rare on the internet, they present a significant challenge for our industry and society as their use increases,“ Monika Bickert, vice president of global policy management, wrote in a blog post.
However, the social media giant has also clarified that the updated policies will not apply on content that is “parody or satire, or video that has been edited solely to omit or change the order of words.”
“This approach is critical to our strategy and one we heard specifically from our conversations with experts. If we simply removed all manipulated videos flagged by fact-checkers as false, the videos would still be available elsewhere on the internet or social media ecosystem. By leaving them up and labelling them as false, we’re providing people with important information and context,” Facebook said in a post.
Developed through sophisticated tools such as deep learning and artificial intelligence, the deepfakes videos are now becoming a menace for the social media platforms, as they spread misinformation among the users. Experts believe miscreants could misuse deepfakes to propagate fake news. The company will also collaborate with Reuters on free online courses to help newsrooms spot deepfakes.
The Facebook policies were updated in view of the US Presidential election later this year. Other social networking companies are also tightening on content to fight fake news, especially propagated through manipulated media ahead of the elections.
Facebook last year announced a partnership with Microsoft and MIT to fight deepfakes. The companies are investing $10 million to develop open-source tools to make it easier to spot doctored videos.
Posted By: Talib Khan