AI fears ahead of December 7: ‘Media Watch’ to counter fake news

Artificial intelligence (AI) has come to support work in different forms, but its deployment has equally come with an array of threats, including misinformation and disinformation.

With a sophistication that mimics reality, AI has been abused by miscreants who have turned it into a vessel for fake news.

In the serious matter of national elections, such as presidential and parliamentary polls, the threat is even more significant and frightening, given that officials could be cloned and broadcast or published to be declaring results.

But the Executive Secretary of the National Media Commission (NMC), George Sarpong, has urged Ghanaians to moderate their fears as his outfit has launched a special app, dubbed

"Media Watch" to deal with misinformation and disinformation in the lead-up to the December 7 general election.

The app works by allowing citizens to record or film such multiple information and inputting them into the app.

If it detects that the material is fake, it will automatically link up to the strongroom of the NMC for action.

With such information, the NMC would quickly alert the police for the perpetrators to be apprehended.

Mr Sarpong said the NMC was ready to assist different groups within communities to monitor all kinds of fake news.

Calming assurance

The assurance came in the wake of a caution served by the Cyber Security Authority (CSA) that the advent of AI posed a threat to the declaration of authentic results of the December 7 general election.

The CSA said with the emergence of AI and other such engines, the EC boss, Jean Mensa, could be cloned in a video declaring the results even before she did so.

A Senior Manager of the CSA, Joseph Attoh Antwi, addressing the issue of misinformation and disinformation in Accra last Wednesday also warned that the website of the EC could also be hacked and shut down to make way for the creation of a parallel EC account just to create doubts about the final results.

Mr Antwi was speaking at the Ghana Speaks forum on "moderating the airwaves for peaceful and credible elections 2024."

The event was organised by the Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG) and the Cyber Security Authority, in conjunction with the National Communications Authority (NCA) and the NMC.

Mr Antwi urged the EC to mount a robust, tried and tested information technology (IT) system that could ward off any such threat.

EC

Speaking at a different forum in the Central Region, a Deputy Chairman of the EC in charge of Corporate Services, Dr Eric Bossman Asare, said although the commission had a very robust IT system, its use of  IT for election declaration was minimal.

“Everything is 99 per cent manual and the reason is this - when we do the voting at the polling station, the counting is a manual process.  When we finish the results at the polling station, all of them are taken to the collation centre which is also a purely manual process.

“From the constituency collation to the regional collation,it is also a manual process which is aided by excel. At the national level collation, we don't do electronic transmission of results and this is very clearly stated in Constitutional Instrument (CI) 127. Everything is a manual process and at each stage we are able to keep a trail of it,” he said.

Regulation

Touching on the regulation of the electronic space, Mr Sarpong said there were two regulatory bodies being run concurrently, namely the convergence regulatory system and the non-convergence system.

The convergence regulatory system, which is also known as the technical standards, is under the NCA, while the non-convergence system, also referred to as the content standards, is under the NMC.

That, according to panellists and some contributors, created a difficulty in the media space, and called for a merger of the two under one body.

The Chairman of the NMC, Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafoh, said the commission was handicapped and did not have the power to prosecute, but all it could do was to ask offenders to retract any ill publication and apologise, as well as provide room for rejoinders.

He said under Article 173 of the 1992 Constitution, the NMC could not direct journalists as to what to do but to offer guidance.

Mr Boadu-Ayeboafoh, a former Editor of the Daily Graphic, said the solution to dealing with such errant practitioners was not a ban but engagement.

He said closing or shutting down such media outlets could deny people access to information if that was the only means to access news and other information.

He announced the setting up of regional media advisory committees to deal with similar issues.

Action

The Head of Legal and Compliance of the CSA, Jenifer Mensah, said the authority had rolled out a number of measures to support the EC.

They include capacity building and awareness creation, putting in place a national computer emergency response team and cyber drills.