Recognising emerging problems
Perth Now/AAP Bulletin Wire, 12 March 2024:
New rules for search engines will ban child abuse and terrorist content in Australia but will also seek to prevent abuse images being created by AI tools.
Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines will be required to prevent child sexual abuse and terrorist content appearing in search results under a code introduced to govern the industry.
The code will ban the companies' generative artificial intelligence tools being used to produce deepfake versions of the offensive material in one of Australia's first set of AI regulations.
The eSafety Commission launched the Internet Search Engine Services Code on Tuesday following months of negotiations with internet giants over the measures that had to be changed after the launch of generative AI tools.
The code will come into place alongside five other online safety codes covering areas from social media to app stores and will include penalties of up to $780,000 a day for companies that fail to comply with its provisions.
AI experts welcomed the code but said more restrictions and technological advances will be needed to stop the scourge of artificial "class one material" online.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said the search engine code, created under the Online Safety Act, was an important addition to stop the spread of the "worst of the worst" content from being widely seen or shared.
"It helps ensure one of the key gateways to accessing material - through online search engines - is closed," she said.
"It will target illegal content and conduct, with significant enforceable penalties if search engines fail to comply."
The code dictates that search engines take "reasonable and proactive steps" to prevent public exposure to illegal content such as child abuse, pro-terrorism or extremely violent material, and provide tools to report instances of it.
The regulations also apply to "artificial intelligence features integrated into the search functionality that may be used to generate" illegal content - an addition Ms Ingram said had to be added to ensure it dealt with all relevant risks.
"The sudden and rapid rise of generative AI and subsequent announcements by Google and Bing that they would incorporate AI functionality into their internet search engine services all but rendered the original code drafted by industry obsolete," she said.
"What we've ended up with is a robust code that delivers broad protections for children."
Search engines will also be required to publish annual reports into illegal material found and removed from their services.
University of NSW AI Institute chief scientist Toby Walsh said removing the most offensive material from search engines was an important step and preventing its creation using AI tools was equally vital.
"These tools are, sadly, being used to generate such offensive and, in many cases, illegal content," he said
"Ever since generative AI tools became available, the (Australian Federal Police) have seen a significant uptick in the amount of such content... so it's definitely a real challenge."
Prof Walsh told AAP banning illegal AI-generated images would become easier after technological advances allowed content to be digitally watermarked but, until then, regulations were crucial to taking action against it.
"(The code) doesn't fix the problem because there are lots of other ways of accessing these tools ... but it's an obvious place to start," he said......
The Daily Telegraph, 18 March 2024, p.3:
The nation’s competition watchdog is putting search engines on notice, announcing plans to scrutinise the competitive nature and quality of popular services including Google and Bing.
The inquiry into the search engine giants, announced today, will call for consumers, businesses and experts to recall recent results and consider whether recent changes to laws in Europe have affected the results they see.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has released an issues paper as part of its Digital Platform Services Inquiry.
Under the inquiry, the watchdog is continuing to put different aspects of consumer technology offerings under the microscope.
The new probe into search engines comes are new laws and regulations under consideration in the UK and Europe will require search engines to promote competition, ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said.
“We’ve seen new laws introduced overseas that place obligations on so-called ‘gatekeeper’ search engines and the emergence of new technologies, like generative AI, that have changed the way consumers search for information online and may be impacting the quality of the service they are receiving,” she said.
The ACCC wants to know whether the general public still believes search engines are useful and whether they’ve noticed changes to the quality of the results they see.
The increased scrutiny arrives at a time when artificial intelligence is set to impact the way search engines perform. AI-powered search engines and tools are growing and these results aren’t influenced by the same advertising constraints and requirements as older search engines including Google. Social media platforms are also increasingly being used as a method of searching or finding visual results to queries, where answers to queries are often cut into short, attention-grabbing videos infused with marketing strategies.
Those allegedly taking advantage of the situation
The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 March 2024:
Liberal Party press releases and its website are showing up on the Google News tab as a source of information alongside queries about prominent current affairs searches, calling into question the technology giant's verification of news material, according to one of Australia's senior-most media and data experts.
Links to different media releases from the Liberal Party website show first in response to search with keywords "Labor position nuclear", "Labor and nuclear" or "Labor renewables" in Google News at a time when federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is pushing for Australia to adopt nuclear power.
Associate professor of news and political communication at Monash University Emma Briant said it "looks like a clear strategy by the Liberals to get political content listed as news to increase its credibility and visibility in the search engine".
Briant, who was also involved in exposing the Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal, called on Google to be more rigorous in making sure material marked as news came from verified news organisations.
"It's too easy for those pushing persuasion and propaganda to take advantage of the high level of trust the public places in Google News - and it will only become more dangerous as campaigns can train AI to produce articles that more effectively game the system," she said.
The Liberal Party directed questions about the referral to Google.
Google declined to explain the Liberal Party's presence in the News tab but pointed to its "publisher help centre", which deems all publishers who comply with its news content policies eligible to appear within Google News.
Anyone generating news-related information, including press releases, can apply to have a dedicated page on Google News.
On its support page, Google says it uses "automated systems" to compile its news index, saying it "algorithmically discovers news content through search technologies".
Google plays a key role in the news ecosystem in Australia and globally. Google Search and News link people to publishers' websites more than 24 billion times each month, the company says.
Its algorithm can be a deciding factor in a website's traffic and its ability to drive revenue through advertising and subscriptions.
In 2021, the federal government implemented the news media bargaining code as a tool to bridge the power imbalance between digital platforms and news publishers.
Google says it is one of the world's biggest financial supporters of journalism. In Australia, it directly contributes more than $135 million to news organisations through deals agreed as part of the bargaining code per year.....
Harvard University's Nieman Lab for Journalism reported in February that Google has tested removing its News tab from search results.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an online practice that allows publishers to target keywords that are relevant to a story in order to attain a higher ranking in Google's search engine result pages.
New trial versions of Google Search use its AI bot Bard to present a summary response to a query, as opposed to links to relevant news sites. Google says the features can help users distil complex information into easy-to-digest formats. The features are yet to be fully rolled out across Google Search.
A spokesperson for Communications Minister Michelle Rowland also declined to comment, saying "Google is best placed to explain how content surfaces on its news product".
The Australian Media and Communications Authority, which oversees the code for misinformation and disinformation was contacted for comment.
And those who thrive on creating their own brand of misinformation
Sky News, 22 March 2024:
Media Research Centre Contributing Writer Stephanie Hamill discusses researchers' discovery of 41 instances of election "interference" by Google since 2008.
"There's algorithms that seem to be in favour of the left," Ms Hamill told Sky News host James Morrow.
"And this report found that not only are they typically in favour of the left but they’re in favour of the most liberal candidate.
"So this goes as far back to 2008 and the researchers are saying that actually, Google may have interfered in the 2008 primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in support of Barack Obama.
“It’s a manipulation of the algorithm and they’re saying that it’s actually escalating and increasing as we go into 2024 in support of Joe Biden.”
Note:
Media Research Center states of itself:
Since 1987, the Media Research Center has worked successfully to expose and counter the leftist bias of the national news media, where now only a historically low 32% of Americans say they trust media to be fair and impartial. Alongside this effort, MRC leads the conservative movement in combatting the left’s efforts to manipulate the electoral process, silence opposing voices online, and undermine American values.
This bad faith actor on the quasi-research centre scene was founded by L. Brent Bozell III, a conservative 'activist' whose son Leo Brent "Zeeker" Bozell IV 44, of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, was found guilty of 10 charges, including five felonies as a result of his actions during the 6 January 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol, when along with others he disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress convened to ascertain and count the electoral votes related to the 2020 presidential election.
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