Brad Smith, Microsoft vice chair and president, compared the ongoing disinformation campaign to the one observed during COVID-19 pandemic
Russia has been spreading “disinformation” about the situation in the Middle East, the president of Microsoft said on Saturday, as tensions soar in the region due to the Israel-Hamas war.
Brad Smith, Microsoft vice chair and president, was asked about the role of the U.S. tech giant in promoting peace at an international peace forum in Paris. He said that Microsoft and its competitors were fighting against disinformation, in particular by using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Smith said that Microsoft and other companies are doing this “by creating technological tools that facilitate the detection of manipulated, modified, altered content,” according to remarks translated in French by radio France Inter.
“We are getting very good at identifying a Russian campaign, like when they tried to tell people not to get the Covid vaccine,” he said. “Or today, when we see Russian disinformation in the Middle East,” he added.
He said the three options facing technology platforms that identify this kind of disinformation are to do nothing, delete it, or re-label it and flag the content has been modified. “There is no societal consensus about what companies should do,” Smith added.
The Paris Peace Forum opened against a backdrop of proliferating conflict around the world, and more than a month into the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Earlier on Friday, France’s President Emmanuel Macron urged Israel to stop killing “women and babies” in Gaza. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by stating that “while Israel does everything in its power to avoid harming civilians and urges them to leave the battle areas, Hamas – ISIS is doing all it can to prevent them from moving to safe areas and uses them as human shields.”
