The media has long played an important role in a healthy democracy, providing citizens with access to accurate news and information that allows them to effectively participate in democratic processes. However, the growing threat from deepfakes and disinformation, from both foreign and domestic sources, threatens to overwhelm the ability of individuals to discern fact from fiction, create new divides in society, and allow conspiracies, lies and hoaxes to fester online.
The public and private sectors have already launched multiple initiatives to address this problem, including expanding R&D to identify fake content and developing standards to improve attribution for authentic content. In this half-day virtual policy conference, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), in collaboration with the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) U.S. Technology Policy Committee (USTPC) and the Online News Association (ONA), will bring together key stakeholders, experts and thought leaders to discuss the future of deepfakes, disinformation and democracy.