The United Nations is urging tech companies to adopt advanced detection tools to combat the growing threat of AI-generated deepfakes, warning of their potential to disrupt elections and facilitate financial fraud. In a report released Friday during its AI for Good Summit in Geneva, the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) emphasized the urgent need for stricter measures to identify and prevent the spread of manipulated digital content.
Deepfakes—AI-generated images, videos, and audio that convincingly mimic real people—are becoming increasingly sophisticated and harder to detect, the ITU warned. The organization is calling for the development of strong international standards to counteract such media and recommends that content platforms, especially social media, implement verification tools to authenticate images and videos before they are shared.
“Trust in social media has dropped significantly because people don’t know what’s true and what’s fake,” said Bilel Jamoussi, head of the Study Groups Department at the ITU’s Standardization Bureau. He identified deepfakes as a major challenge, largely due to generative AI’s growing ability to produce highly realistic, deceptive content.
Leonard Rosenthol, a representative from Adobe—a company tackling deepfakes since 2019—highlighted the importance of transparency and content provenance. “We need more platforms where users consume content to clearly show authenticity indicators,” he said. “When you’re scrolling through your feed, you want to know: can I trust this image or video?”
Dr. Farzaneh Badiei, founder of the digital governance think tank Digital Medusa, emphasized the need for global coordination. “If we rely on fragmented standards and tools, deepfakes will become even more effective,” she told Reuters, pointing out the current absence of a central international body overseeing deepfake detection.
To address the issue, the ITU is developing standards for watermarking videos—the dominant form of content online, accounting for about 80% of internet traffic. These standards aim to embed metadata like creator identity and timestamps, helping verify the origin and integrity of media.
Tomaz Levak, founder of Swiss tech firm Umanitek, added that the private sector has a crucial role to play in both deploying safety technologies and educating users. “AI is only going to get smarter and faster. We need to equip people with the skills to protect themselves from being manipulated by these systems,” he said.
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