UN Urges Global Action to Combat Deepfakes and Misinformation Risks

The United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has called for urgent global action to fight deepfakes and misinformation, citing growing threats of election interference and financial fraud. In a report released during its "AI for Good Summit" in Geneva, the ITU highlighted the dangers posed by AI-generated content, including realistic fake images, videos, and audio impersonations.

With generative AI rapidly evolving, the ITU warned that manipulated multimedia is becoming increasingly difficult to detect. Trust in social media has sharply declined as users struggle to distinguish real content from fakes, noted Bilel Jamoussi, Head of ITU’s Standardization Bureau. The ITU urged social media platforms and digital content distributors to implement digital verification tools to authenticate videos and images before they are published.

Adobe’s Leonard Rosenthol emphasized the importance of provenance—verifiable metadata showing when, where, and by whom content was created—as a critical trust layer for online media. “People need to know if they can trust what they’re seeing in their feeds,” he said.

Farzaneh Badiei, founder of governance research group Digital Medusa, warned that without unified global standards, patchwork solutions may leave users vulnerable. The ITU is now developing global standards for watermarking videos, which account for over 80% of internet traffic, to embed creator identity and timestamps.

Tomaz Levak, founder of Switzerland’s Umanitek, called on the private sector to step up, urging companies to educate users and adopt safeguards proactively. “AI will keep getting smarter. It’s vital we upskill the public to avoid becoming victims of these systems,” he said.

As deepfakes grow more convincing, experts agree that international collaboration and strong digital standards are essential to preserve online trust and safety.