Modi Wants a Way to Trace Where Deepfakes Come From

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the GSMA Board on Tuesday and put two requests to the global technology industry. One was broad: global standards and common rules for emerging technologies. The other was specific. He suggested looking at mechanisms that let users immediately see where a deepfake or a piece of AI-generated content came from.

The meeting was at Seva Teerth, a day before India Mobile Congress opens. IMC runs from 7 to 10 October.

What he said

The Economic Times reports these points from the meeting:

• Emerging technologies need global standards and common rules.
• Users should be able to identify the origin of deepfakes and AI-generated content straight away.
• Digital and cyber fraud needs technology-driven fixes, along with sustained awareness messages that warn people about fraud calls.
• Technology and digital services have to be affordable and accessible, particularly for the Global South, so the digital divide doesn't widen.

GSMA Board members talked about room for collaboration in 5G, 6G, AI, cybersecurity, digital inclusion and satellite connectivity.

The provenance point is the one to watch

"Global rules for AI" comes up at almost every summit, and it rarely becomes something an engineering team can build against. Provenance is different because it is a concrete technical problem. You attach a verifiable record of where a piece of media came from, and you show that record to the person receiving it.

He also put deepfakes and fraud calls in the same breath. That is where the risk sits for banks, insurers and payment companies. A cloned voice of a relative or a branch manager is a ready-made fraud script, and the person taking the call has no way to check it today.

Telecom operators are a sensible place to start. They sit between the caller and the customer, and the GSMA is their industry body. Raising provenance with its board, the day before IMC, puts the problem in front of people who could build it into networks and handsets.

What enterprises can do without waiting

• List the places where your organisation receives voice, video or documents that customers or staff are expected to trust.
• Treat any instruction that arrives only by voice or video as unverified until it is confirmed on a second channel, especially if it moves money or changes access.
• Ask your vendors whether provenance or content credentials are on their roadmap, and when.

A global standard will take time to agree. The fraud calls are coming in now, so the second-channel check is worth putting in place this quarter.

Source: Modi calls for global rules on emerging tech and AI — The Economic Times