The need to establish rules for the use of artificial intelligence, but also the identification of users on the internet, was reiterated by Pavlos Marinakis, speaking at the Delphi Economic Forum.
The deputy prime minister and government spokesman described the disinformation “one of the greatest crises of our time”, noting that the fight for the truth does not only concern the political system, but democracy, society and the everyday life of citizens.
“The fight against misinformation is a profoundly social issue. It is a matter of existence, it is a matter of survival,” he said.
Referring to the role of artificial intelligence, Pavlos Marinakis stressed that it is no longer meaningful to discuss whether it can do “good or bad”, as it is already part of reality.
“Misinformation is a crisis. You owe it to the weapons that each season has to use them in your favor, not to turn them against you. One of them is artificial intelligence,” he noted.
He said the same technology can be used either for fact-checking or for spreading fake news. “We have to win this battle,” he said.
Pavlos Marinakis particularly stressed the need for citizens to know when a text, article or video has been produced using artificial intelligence.
“Anyone who uses artificial intelligence, whether for a text, an article, or anything, let people know that they have made use of it.” he said, also referring to the Company’s initiative to formulate a Code of Conduct on the use of artificial intelligence in the media.
According to the government spokesman, the issue is not only about the quality of information, but also the protection of the democratic process, as misinformation can even influence an election result.
Pavlos Marinakis noted that while deepfakes pose a risk, the biggest problem is not just a fake video that can be released before an election.
“The problem is a anonymous article on a site or a anonymous social media account that can post a video or story that can’t be proven very quickly to be false,” he said.
In this context, he reiterated his proposal for identifying every user on the internet. “I reiterate over and over again a personal, identity-based position on the identification of every user on the internet,” he said, clarifying that he was not talking about removing pseudonymity, but about the possibility of identification in case of legal issues.
“Anyone who is not committing an illegal act has nothing to fear,” he added.
The government spokesman linked the issue to the next elections, noting that the rules that traditionally applied to the election period must be adapted to the new reality.
“Nowadays, in this era, elections are held through the internet, that is, through social media,” Pavlos Marinakis said.
He said a platform that operates in a state without identifying its users and without obligatory notification when a video is a product of artificial intelligence “can influence the outcome of the elections.”
Pavlos Marinakis argued that Greece should play a leading role at European level in this debate, as he said it did on the issue of protection of minors on social media.
In response to objections on the protection of users’ rights, the government spokesman stressed that there was no question of restricting freedom of expression.
“Nobody is talking about rules about who can and cannot write anything,” he said, adding that the point is to be able to identify, in case of criminal offence, who is behind a profile or a website.
“Democracy is not promiscuity. Democracy is not something that has no rules, no laws, no restrictions,” he said.
Pavlos Marinakis argued that misinformation is not a phenomenon born with artificial intelligence or social media, but existed before and today it is acquiring new tools.
As he said, in his tenure as a government spokesman he has been called upon many times to deconstruct fake news, which, in his estimation, were not mainly from artificial intelligence, but from “propaganda from other parties and some media outlets“.
He specifically referred to the narrative of wooden and “lost wagons” in the Tebs hypothesis, saying that it was not created by artificial intelligence, but “hearsay”. He also referred to the case of “dead Maria” in Evros, which he described as an example of misinformation of national proportions.
“It is a battle that concerns us all,” the government spokesman concluded.
