US Senate committee questions tech executives about election threats
By Katie Paul
NEW YORK, Sept 18 (Reuters) -U.S. lawmakers questioned tech executives on Wednesday about their preparations for battling foreign disinformation threats ahead of elections in November, with both the senators and executivesidentifying the 48 hours around Election Day as the most vulnerable time.
"There is a potential moment of peril ahead. Today we are 48 days away from the election... the most perilous moment will come, I think, 48 hours before the election," Microsoft MSFT.O President Brad Smith testified at the hearing, held by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.
Senator Mark Warner, who chairs the panel, agreed with Smith but said the 48 hoursafter the polls close on Nov. 5 couldbe "equally if not more significant," especially if the election is close.
Policy executives from Google GOOGL.O and Meta META.O, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, also testified at the hearing.
Elon Musk's X was invited to testify but declined, several senators said. An X spokesperson said the reason was that the company's invited witness, former head of global affairs Nick Pickles, had resigned earlier this month.
TikTok was not invited to participate, according to a company spokesperson.
To illustrate his concern about the time immediately before people vote, Smith referred to a case from Slovakia's 2023 election, in which a purported voice recording of a party leader talking about rigging the vote emerged shortly before the election and spread online. The recording was fake.
Warner and other senators also pointed to tactics revealed in a U.S. crackdown on alleged Russian influence efforts earlier this month, involving fake websites made to look like real U.S. news organizations including Fox News and the Washington Post.
"How does this get through? How do we know how extensive this is?" Warner asked the executives. He requested that the companies share data with the committee by next week showing how many Americans viewed the content and how many advertisements ran to promote it.
Tech companies have largely embraced labeling and watermarking to address risks posed by new generative artificial intelligence technologies, which have made fake but realistic-seeming images, audio and video easy to produce and raised concerns about their impact on elections.
Asked how the companies would react if such a deepfake of a political candidate were to surface immediately before the elections, Smith and Meta's President of Global Affairs Nick Cleggboth said their companies would apply labels to the content.
Clegg said Meta also potentially would suppress its circulation.
Reporting by Katie Paul; editing by Diane Craft
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Penafian: Entiti XM Group menyediakan perkhidmatan pelaksanaan sahaja dan akses ke Kemudahan Dagangan Atas Talian, yang membolehkan sesorang melihat dan/atau menggunakan kandungan yang ada di dalam atau melalui laman web, tidak bertujuan untuk mengubah atau memperluas, juga tidak mengubah atau mengembangkannya. Akses dan penggunaan tersebut tertakluk kepada: (i) Terma dan Syarat; (ii) Amaran Risiko; dan Penafian Penuh. Oleh itu, kandungan sedemikian disediakan tidak lebih dari sekadar maklumat umum. Terutamanya, perlu diketahui bahawa kandungan Kemudahan Dagangan Atas Talian bukan permintaan, atau tawaran untuk melakukan transaksi dalam pasaran kewangan. Berdagang dalam mana-mana pasaran kewangan melibatkan tahap risiko yang besar terhadap modal anda.
Semua bahan yang diterbitkan di Kemudahan Dagangan Atas Talian kami bertujuan hanya untuk tujuan pendidikan/maklumat dan tidak mengandungi – dan tidak boleh dianggap mengandungi nasihat kewangan, cukai pelaburan atau dagangan dan cadangan, atau rekod harga dagangan kami, atau tawaran, atau permintaan untuk suatu transaksi dalam sebarang instrumen kewangan atau promosi kewangan yang tidak diminta kepada anda.
Sebarang kandungan pihak ketiga serta kandungan yang disediakan oleh XM, seperti pendapat, berita, penyelidikan, analisis, harga, maklumat lain atau pautan ke laman web pihak ketiga yang terdapat dalam laman web ini disediakan berdasarkan "seadanya" sebagai ulasan pasaran umum dan bukanlah nasihat pelaburan. Sesuai dengan apa-apa kandungan yang ditafsir sebagai penyelidikan pelaburan, anda mestilah ambil perhatian dan menerima bahawa kandungan tersebut tidak bertujuan dan tidak sediakan berdasarkan keperluan undang-undang yang direka untuk mempromosikan penyelidikan pelaburan bebas dan oleh itu, ia dianggap sebagai komunikasi pemasaran di bawah peraturan dan undang-undang yang berkaitan. SIla pastikan bahawa anda telah membaca dan memahami Notifikasi mengenai Penyelidikan Pelaburan Bukan Bebas dan Amaran Risiko mengenai maklumat di atas yang boleh diakses di sini.
