At the event organized by major technology companies, as part of 60th Munich Security Conferencefor the signing of a Technological Pact to combat the misleading use of artificial intelligence in the 2024 elections, the Prime Minister was appointed in the afternoon, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Government sources emphasize that the Technology Pact has as its main objectives, among others, the prevention of the creation and distribution of misleading material, the marking of the origin of content, which will allow the detection of suspicious material on various platforms, the rapid and proportionate response in the event that the creation or distribution of falsified material is established and providing information to citizens and the media to better deal with the phenomenon of deep fakes.

The following is the full statement of the Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis:

“It’s an honor for me to be part of this meeting and let me start by mentioning how important it is to sit at the same table with the big tech companies. You made a reference to Athens as the cradle of democracy. Of course, the Athenian democracy was a direct democracy, not a representative democracy. But that doesn’t mean she was immune to rumors or populism. And much of the deep thinking of ancient thinkers who wrote about ancient democracy focused on how one might protect a democracy from these kinds of threats.

Today, we are faced with completely different challenges. And my interest in this issue began when I understood the real potential of artificial intelligence in the creation of deep fakes, which can be extremely persuasive and especially dangerous in an election environment. Imagine the Friday before the pre-election activities stop. In Greece, for example, we cannot do anything after midnight on the Friday before the elections. So on Saturday, suddenly an audio or video is released that is deep fake, it spreads everywhere and you have no way to react. This is exactly what happened in Slovakia, and this is something we know will happen in many upcoming elections.

So the challenge is how to protect ourselves from what we know will happen. And I find it particularly encouraging that technology companies recognize that they have an important role to play. At the end of the day, they also have the technologies and can advise us on how we can protect ourselves from this impending reality. And the fact that we are sitting around the table today recognizing that this is a real threat and that action needs to be taken, I think is a clear step in the right direction.

My second very brief point is that whatever we do and whatever you do obviously cannot and will not replace our obligation as the European Union to regulate this space. And the Vice President will talk a lot more about that. So I won’t spend much of her time talking about what we’ve done, starting with him General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Digital Services Act (DSA) and of course now the Artificial Intelligence Act. But the voluntary contribution of technology companies goes hand in hand with a regulatory framework.

And of course, finding the right balance between the right regulatory framework and not restricting innovation is an ongoing challenge. I have to say that sometimes we sit at this table asymmetrically in terms of information or in-depth understanding of exactly how the technology itself works. This can sometimes be a problem because when we as politicians feel that we do not fully understand what is going on in terms of technology, we can tend to over-intervene regulatoryly. And this could be a problem for the development of artificial intelligence.

My last very brief point is that we need to educate the public. And this is especially important, because in an age when a large part of election campaigning and political activity is done through social media, explaining to the general public exactly what can happen through very convincing deep fakes is a shared responsibility of both two. Will the general public be more suspicious? Yes. But do they also have an obligation to think twice when they see something suspicious or somewhat unusual? Yes, because we may not have the time to either flag it properly or identify it as fake or even remove it from the platform.

Therefore, educating the public about the malicious potential of artificial intelligence I believe is a shared responsibility. And the more we talk about the dangers, the more educated the public will become and of course the less susceptible to all kinds of misinformation.

And my last remark: we as politicians believe a lot in new election campaign techniques. Yes, they really can work wonders in the context of proper regulation and the rules we have to apply when it comes to communicating our messages to our audience. However, at the end of the day, nothing can replace what we call “retail politics”, that is, the traditional politics of communicating with citizens, like going around and shaking their hands. And, as far as I know, the technology hasn’t yet reached the point where it can create a convincing hologram of me walking around a Greek village doing a traditional election campaign.

This may happen at some point, but today it gives us the stimulus to rethink that we should not base our communication with the general public on an election campaign that uses only the most advanced technological tools.

So again, as the head of a government that thinks a lot about the future of democracy and about protecting the integrity of the democratic process, congratulations on this initiative. I believe it is a clear step in the right direction. And let’s also think about how we can use AI tools to improve the democratic process, to make public consultations more efficient and more objective. Let’s look at the other side of the coin. We’ll be looking for your input on what AI can do to improve civic engagement to strengthen relationships of trust between elected officials and society. Thank you very much”.

Government sources point out that during the event the importance of the Pact and the need to adopt similar collective initiatives were emphasized, given that in 2024 polls will be set up in dozens of countries representing about half of the world’s population, while at the same time progress in the field of artificial intelligence allows the development of persuasive misleading material with the aim of disinformation.

In fact, in the prime minister’s talks on the sidelines of the event, it was pointed out that Greece has already taken a particularly active role in the field of artificial intelligence, with a series of government initiatives, in order to contribute to the development of a network of best rules and practices, especially for the ethical use of AI.

In addition, it was emphasized that our country has already set up an Advisory Committee for Artificial Intelligence, has prepared a study on productive AI (Generative AI Greece 2030) and is in the phase of preparing a National Strategy, as reported by government sources.

The event was also attended by the Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for Values ​​and Transparency, Věra Jourová, the Chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee Mark Warner, the MEP Eva Maydell and top executives of the technology companies Adobe, Amazon, Google, IBM , Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and TikTok.