Prime Minister Kim Min-seok on Tuesday called for caution against fake news generated with artificial intelligence, as the 50-day countdown began for the June local election.
In his address to the nation to call for fair elections, Kim said AI-generated fake news poses a grave threat to the country's democracy because the technology has developed to the degree that generated images or videos blur reality.
"As generative AI technology rapidly evolves, the election environment is fundamentally changing," Kim said in his address at the Government Complex Seoul.
"Scenes that never existed are created as if they were real, and statements that were never spokes are being generated and disseminated as if they were real, and they pose a significant threat to the fairness of the election."
Adding fuel to the concern is the rise of social media that enables such fake news content to spread quickly across the internet, which ends up "wasting administrative resources and incurring social cost" to remove them.
Stressing that using AI-generated deepfake videos for campaigning is strictly prohibited under the Public Official Election Act for 90 days until the election day, Kim said any violation would be met with grave legal consequences through the zero-tolerance approach.
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