More than 90 per cent of people in the UK have seen misinformation on social media, according to new research from the Alan Turing Institute.
The body examined how people interact with different strategies to protect themselves from misinformation and found that many people were unaware of how to respond to fake posts and how to verify what they read.
The institute is also warning that content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) could be used to create confusion during the general election campaign.
Christian blogger and AI expert Chris Goswami told Premier Christian News :“Social media is a great influencer. I believe there's something like 50 elections taking place worldwide this year so something like half the world's population will be voting democratically. It's inconceivable that AI deep fakes will not influence those.”
A deep fake is usually a piece of audio or video that looks like it's been originated by somebody we know or recognise, but it's not them in reality. They look like people we know and recognise, but they are not authentic.
Chris Goswami says elections have been influenced in the past by misinformation: “Last year, there was an election in Slovakia where the leader of the progressive Slovakian party was filmed constructing a deal with the traveller community, the Romany community of that country, and caught making promises to them. That video did get spread widely and went viral and he lost the election the next day. So, was that deep fake responsible for losing the election? It's impossible to say how much influence that video had, but there’s no doubt that people were influenced.”
Technology is being devised to help watermark video and audio clips to enable the audience to see the track record of who created the image and its source. But Chris Goswami says until that technology is introduced, we all need to ask questions to make sure we trust the source and to understand how a post triggers our emotions.
“I think when you see a post or a video of somebody, ask the question whether it’s making you feel gossipy suddenly, or intensely angry suddenly - because that might be a sign actually that somebody has created it for that purpose.”
Christians understand that Jesus is the truth, so for Goswami, “we should use that in principle, to make sure we always question what we see.”
The majority of people (72 per cent) interviewed were found to be comfortable with platforms using "behind the scenes" interventions. This includes demonetisation, cutting financial incentives for creators of disinformation; downranking content, making content less visible; early moderation, screening content before it goes live; and de-platforming, removing users from a social media platform to counter misinformation.
However, the research shows that most people were unaware of the interventions they could use themselves to counter misinformation. Just three per cent reported they had taken a media literacy course, and seven per cent had used self-help resources.
Dr Jonathan Bright, head of online aafety at The Alan Turing Institute, said: “Concern about misinformation is undoubtedly extremely high. The lack of trust in mainstream news organisations demonstrates a wider scepticism of information more generally. It’s really important that people feel they can have confidence in information they receive from reliable sources, particularly during a crucial election year for the UK and the US. It’s clear there’s a lot of work to be done to instil confidence in people.”
The Alan Turing Institute is the national Institute for data science and artificial intelligence, with headquarters at the British Library.