Canada Labels AI Threat to its Future

The Canadian government has published an extensive overview of AI’s impact on information consumed on the web.

The authorities showcased examples of how the burgeoning technology is being used for vile purposes, often involving deepfakes. They encompass media “manipulations that are based on advanced artificial intelligence (AI), where images, voices, videos or text are digitally altered or fully generated by AI.”

“Deepfake applications are also becoming more accessible and less technical. Despite this, there appears to be a lack of awareness or knowledge around deepfakes, and an inability to recognize or detect them,” the authors write. 

The vile applications include fake pornographic videos featuring different streamers.

“Such examples of deepfake porn are not uncommon. Over 90 percent of deepfakes available online are non-consensual pornographic clips of women; as of October 2022 there were over 57 million hits for ‘deepfake porn’ on Google alone,” the authorities write.

Beyond fake porn, these deepfakes involve famous people, like Elon Musk, offering to participate in crypto scams (without specifying that it’s a scam, naturally).

The government also discussed AI’s effect on disinformation, i.e. falsehoods that are deliberately intended to deceive people. Acknowledging that  disinformation can have a sweeping magnitude of influence, the authors point to AI-generated text such as articles, blogs, and reviews. All these can be posted among authentic content. 

This poses a real threat to society, the government points out, saying that “if a democratic society is unable to differentiate fact from fiction, then how is it going to survive?”

“How is Canada going to function if there are different sets of unverifiable facts that different segments of the population believe in? If disinformation is unmanageable and/or unidentifiable, how is Canada going to develop solutions for those real problems?” they proceed to ask rhetorically.

While also pointing out the ramifications this technology can have on Canadian values and potential harm caused to Canadians and their allies, the authors talk about regulation.

They acknowledge that the technology is evolving at a much faster pace than the regulation that can be rendered irrelevant due to the amount of time it’s taking to produce one.

“Collaboration amongst partner governments, allies, academics, and industry experts is essential to both maintaining the integrity of globally distributed information and addressing the malicious application of evolving AI,” they conclude.