Welcome to the first issue of NetMission’s news and policy digest, where we transform some tech news and policy updates of the month into a bite-size reader for you. In this edition, we will explore some emerging issues of the misuse of AI and the progress of AI governance.
Unethical AI: A nightmare to women
Although technology can be used for the good of mankind, misuse of AI-powered tools creates risks and other undesirable outcomes that must be mitigated. In this issue, we echo recent reports showing a rise in deep fake porn creation to highlight the width with which AI-generated content can affect women. For instance, the creation of Images of high-profile celebrities like Taylor Swift, Natalie Portman, and Emma Watson has doubled in one year.
A weapon to silence
Rana Ayyub, a Muslim investigative journalist, was targeted by netizens online for political reasons and by the BJP party. It first started with misinformation campaigns, but it later escalated to a deep fake porn video that was shared more than 40.000 times. Screenshots of the videos were also shared alongside her WhatsApp contact. It is important to note that the case of Ms. Ayyub took place four years before the boom of AI.
Children & women fall victim to deep fake porn
In late September, a case of AI-generated naked images shocked the Spanish town of Almendralejo as a group of 28 girls reported being impacted.
During the same month, a South Korean man was sentenced to jail for using AI to create sexual images of children, being the first case in the country. On the other side of the globe, an Argentinean University student was jailed for three years for creating fake AI porn using his female classmates’s social media posts. These reported cases highlight how easily AI can be used to violate people’s bodily autonomy and safety, especially for women and minors.
The use of AI tools to create fake porn is truly a global issue, and it is hard to grasp its extent, but it can become a nightmare for women and trap them into what some of its victims have described as a lifelong sentence.
Silver lining: Help is on the way
Indeed, discussions around AI governance were particularly active throughout October – starting from extensive discussions on AI governance at the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2023 in Kyoto to the US Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, the G7 Hiroshima AI Process, and the Bletchley Declaration by the countries attending the UK’s AI Safety Summit. Finally, according to co-rapporteur Dragoș Tudorache, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act may have entered its final negotiation stages.
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Fun Fact
On my flight home from Kyoto after attending the IGF 2023, I watched “The Imitation Game (2014)” for the first time. This movie is about a group of mathematicians, including computer science pioneer Alan Turing, breaking Nazi Germany’s Enigma code during World War II at Bletchley Park, which happens to be the venue of the UK’s first AI Safety Summit.
The Turing test, originally called the imitation game, is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.
By Jenna Manhau Fung (Reviewed by Vicente Arias González)