Romania takes on deepfake content used amid election campaigns

7 months ago 37

The Romanian government is set to approve a memorandum to tackle the spread of deepfake content during election campaigns, Research Minister Bogdan Ivan announced on Thursday.

Following parliamentary debates on the deepfake law that resulted in the parliamentary committees having to revisit the bill, the Romanian government has issued a memorandum to mitigate the impact of deepfake content on the upcoming European and local elections on 9 June.

Meanwhile, the Romanian government, major technology companies, the Central Electoral Board and seven other Romanian institutions are in talks to create an ‘Election Hub’, which will establish a direct channel between the Romanian authorities and major social media platforms to ensure that strict measures are in place to prevent the spread of deepfake content.

“There are some powerful technical filters that prevent deep fake content from getting published on social media platforms. In any case, this content has to be marked as unreal content, created with the help of generative artificial intelligence”, said Ivan.

However, not all deepfakes are filtered, as highlighted by Energy Minister Sebastian Burduja, who shared his personal experience of being the victim of a deepfake video that remained online for two weeks despite being reported to Facebook.

The new memorandum is part of the legislation necessary to implement the European Union’s Digital Services Act and AI Act.

In addition to guaranteeing that legislation will be aligned with that of the bloc and that no “additional regulations” or “restrictions on rights” will be introduced, Ivan emphasised that “substantial fines”, including penalties of up to 7% of a company’s turnover for serious breaches, will be imposed for non-compliance.

The decision to send the deepfake bill back to parliamentary committees followed criticism from several organisations with expertise in internet, media and good governance. These groups raised concerns that the proposed legislation was closer to the Chinese model than the European one.

(Catalina Mihai | Euractiv.ro)