Deepfake is not in our interest; company complies with all local laws: YouTube

PTI

New Delhi, December 1

Deepfake videos are not in the interest of YouTube as none of the stakeholders want to associate themselves with platforms that allow fake news or misinformation, a senior company official has said.

YouTube, India Director, Ishan John Chatterjee on Thursday said the firm complies with all local laws and continues to engage with the government on all emerging issues.

"I want to reiterate that misinformation, in general, and deepfakes in AI is actually not in our interest at all. As a platform, if you look at the different stakeholders that we serve, and let us take the three broad ones i.e. users or viewers, creators and advertisers, none of them want to be associated with a platform that allows fake news (or) misinformation," Chatterjee said.

YouTube's intentions are very aligned with the government and key stakeholders that it has to address, he added.

"We comply with all local laws and continue to engage with the government and industry stakeholders on emerging issues." He was responding to a query related to Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar's comment that social media platforms have not aligned their terms of use as per new IT rules that were notified in October 2022.

Union Cabinet Minister for Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw and Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar have directed social media platforms to strictly act against deepfakes.

Vaishnaw had said that the government would come out with new guidelines to fight deepfakes.

Chandrasekhar had asked social media firms to update their user's policy as per the IT rules notified in October 2022.

The government swung into action after several celebrities reported about their deepfake images and videos in circulation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also flagged issues around deepfakes.

YouTube Director Global Head of Responsibility Timothy Katz said the company removes content that is not compliant with policy and tries to recommend videos from credible sources in cases where the content impacts somebody's finances, election etc.

The company, in its compliance report for the second quarter of 2023, mentioned having removed over 78,000 videos globally for violating misinformation, including videos that violated its manipulated content policy policies.

The video platform also removed 9,63,000 videos for violating its spam, deceptive practices and scams policy.

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