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We have weapons against AI-powered deepfakes but fighting truth decay won’t be easy
Legal and tech tools to correct, block and slow down false information are being sharpened by governments around the world, but they have their limits.
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Concerns about the information diet of the public are as old as democracy itself.
ST PHOTO: GIN TAY
Simon Chesterman
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Though Donald Trump would like credit for coining the term, “fake news” was a headline in The New York Times more than a century ago. The history of propaganda is far older. An early example was Egypt’s Ramses the Great, who decorated temples with monuments to his tremendous victory in the 13th century BCE Battle of Kadesh. The outcome was, at best, a stalemate.
But the tools for generating, sharing and consuming dubious information are now very different in the age of AI. This is cause for concern because, over the course of 2024, countries with more than half the world’s population will hold national elections.
