ChatGPT is cracking down on photorealistic, political deepfakes ahead of next week’s US midterm elections.

One of the biggest problems of the AI age is that AI deepfakes are now so realistic that they’re practically indistinguishable from real photos. That matters a lot during election season, when voters are looking for reliable, truthful information on their candidates and polling sites. OpenAI is implementing a new safeguard to prevent people from making political deepfakes.

The US midterm election is only a week away on Nov. 3. Tech issues are taking center stage in many races, especially as AI and data center concerns rise for folks across the country. (Check out CNET’s guide to spotting political scams.)

If you were to go into ChatGPT today and ask it to generate an image “depicting election interference or that may discourage voting,” as OpenAI put it in an Oct. 20 update, the chatbot would create the image, given it doesn’t violate any other content guidelines. But it will be in an illustrated or cartoon style — all requests to have the image appear photorealistic should be ignored.

For example, CNET asked ChatGPT to create an image of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers standing outside a polling location. Every such prompt generated an image in a cartoon style. A photorealistic version of this kind of image would likely spark anxiety, if not outright panic, for voters.

The idea is to make it harder for bad actors to create realistic political deepfakes that could interfere with or question the integrity of an election without stymying people’s ability to create political content in general.

Source link