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The city state joins other jurisdictions looking to clamp down on manipulated media, with its next general election to be held no later than November 2025.
Puthucheary, who was among panel speakers on Friday at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy’s Festival of Ideas, said the proposed safeguards would enable election candidates to report digitally manipulated content that realistically depicts them saying or doing something that they did not in fact say or do.
The proposed Elections (Integrity of Online Advertising) (Amendment) Bill grants the Returning Officer, who supervises elections, the power to issue corrective directions to publishers or service providers. Misrepresented candidates can also declare the truthfulness of their claims.
Failure to comply could result in fines, imprisonment, or both. Candidates who submit false or misleading information risk a fine or losing their seats.
During a panel on AI governance and disinformation, Puthucheary warned that how voters absorb information is an area “rife for manipulation for AI-driven tools”.
He added that the bill, which would be debated in parliament at the next available sitting, was intended to avoid situations in other countries where public trust had been eroded by deep fakes.
“It is, in terms of its operations, focused around the candidate … But it has, as its intent, the shoring up of public trust in information discourse platforms, the media, and that sense of institutions having a responsibility above and beyond their own narrow interests,” the minister said.
Puthucheary, who is also the Senior Minister of State for Health, addressed the difference between Pofma and the bill on Friday, saying that with Pofma, there was a “test around public interest and a requirement for an establishment of fact by an authoritative third party”.
He explained, for example, how someone might have a very different opinion of vaccines, but ultimately, an academic informing the Health Ministry could advise them that this was against the public interest.
Puthucheary said this was a very different process from an election, where the only people who could provide verification that something did not happen were the candidates themselves.
“The government is in no position to do so, a third party, an academic, a professor, research institution, is in no position to do so,” he said.
He noted that other organisations might have technological views about the material, but whether an act happened was something a candidate had “an interest in expressing, and then a responsibility to address in terms of providing the electorate the correct information”.
Puthucheary noted that high trust in institutions such as the government and the media was a “necessary precondition” for discussions on the electoral process, acknowledging that Singapore was privileged to have this trust.
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3279357/singapore-seeks-fight-deepfakes-elections-new-laws-ahead-2025-polls
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Singapore is exploring ways to regulate deepfake content and potentially introducing a temporary ban due to concerns that AI may significantly blur the lines between fact and fiction ahead of elections. Minister for digital development and information Josephine Teo mentioned at the Reuters Next Apac conference that various countries, like South Korea, are implementing measures such as a 90-day ban on political AI content before elections. However, Teo noted that Singapore's short election period requires different solutions. The country addresses AI-generated misinformation with laws like the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma), which can be applied to AI-generated fake news. Teo emphasised the need for regulations to close loopholes in the law regarding AI-created falsehoods. In addition, she discussed Singapore's ambition to become a global AI player, highlighting the importance of talent, data access frameworks, and expanding data centre capacity to support AI development. My take: As AI technology advances, the potential for misuse, especially in the political arena, is significant. For example, AI-generated videos featuring Singapore’s former prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, discussing international issues and foreign leaders have emerged, and, more sinisterly, British female politicians have fallen victim to AI-generated fake pornography, with their faces used in explicit images. These images, some of which have been online for years and garnered hundreds of thousands of views, range from crude Photoshops to more sophisticated deepfakes created with AI technology. On the other hand, during the recent Indian elections, politicians had no qualms about using deepfake audio and video of themselves to connect with voters, who were often unaware that they were interacting with a digital clone rather than the actual person. According to Wired, people living in rural areas frequently experience a heightened sense of importance when they receive personalised AI calls from individuals in high positions. Regardless of how politicians use AI, I would like to see the law agile enough to address the unique characteristics of AI-generated deepfakes, which can be more sophisticated and more challenging to detect than traditional misinformation. However, I acknowledge that balancing the need for stringent regulations with the flexibility to adapt to new technological developments can be difficult.
Read more at: https://www.campaignasia.com/article/tech-on-me-will-singapore-succeed-in-banning-deepfakes/497151
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