The EU has told big companies like Facebook and TikTok to watch out for fake videos and stuff made by computers that can trick people. They want these companies to put special labels on them, so everyone knows they’re not real. This is because there’s a big election happening all across Europe in June, and they don’t want fake news to mess it up.
The EU has made some rules called the Digital Services Act (DSA), and they’re using it to tell the big internet places what to do. They’re saying, “Hey, you 22 really big websites, you need to help us stop the fake news.”
The EU is worried because there’s a lot of cool stuff happening with AI, like when ChatGPT came out and everyone was talking about it. But they’re also worried because some countries like Russia might make fake news to confuse people during elections.
The EU’s plan is to make sure the big websites help people find the real news about the elections and not let the fake stuff spread or make money. They want everything to be fair and clear.
Even though the EU can’t force the companies to do exactly what they say, if the companies don’t have a good enough plan, they could get in trouble and maybe even must pay a lot of money.
They also want all the ads about the election to be clear that they’re ads, and they want to make sure nothing weird happens that could change the election results. The EU will check on the big tech companies in April to make sure they’re ready.
One big company is already in trouble since December because of how they handle what people post. And just last month, the EU asked some big platforms to tell them how they’re going to stop the AI from causing trouble in the elections.
Some companies are already working on it. Like TikTok, they’re going to send messages to their users to help them find real news about the vote. That’s important because a lot of young people in the EU use TikTok and get their news from there.
