'Very critical': Google India head on tackling misinformation in AI era

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New technologies like AI have opened massive opportunities but pose challenges like deepfakes, Google India's Country Manager and Vice President Preeti Lobana said asserting that fighting misinformation remains a top priority for the tech giant, which relies on strong policies, advanced AI technology, and human oversight to address these issues systematically.

The Asia Pacific region is particularly seeing higher degree of scams/frauds and misinformation has been a challenge, she said adding Google is stepping up its efforts to curb misleading and fake content.

Noting that Google last year had announced plans for launching 'Google Safety Engineering Centre' in India, Lobana termed the move "imminent".

"This (tackling misinformation) is super important for us, when you think about our mission, about information being universally accessible and organising it in a certain way, making sure that we are tackling misinformation in a very systematic manner is very, very critical. So...(it is about) having the right policies and guidelines, having the right technology, having the right human oversight to make sure that we are catching misinformation," she said.

With innovations like SynthID for watermarking and verifying AI-generated content, Google is also working with partners to strengthen content authenticity and trust.

"...we're introducing innovation like SynthID, so when any content is created using some of Google's AI tools, there is an invisible watermark, and it's pretty strong technology, because even if it is shared across multiple people or edited, it is detectable," she said.

Google has also introduced a SynthID verifier that allows users to upload content and detect whether or not a video is synthetic or AI generated.

Pointing out that fight against misinformation is always a work in progress she said Google is collaborating with other stakeholders in the ecosystem as well on provenance and authenticity.

" These are our efforts. The ecosystem needs to come together, but it is deeply important to us to make sure that we are combating that," she said.

Noting that Google had announced last year plans to launch Google Safety Engineering Centre in India, Lobana termed the move "imminent". On Tuesday, the company also unveiled Google Safety Charter for India's AI-led transformation.

As per Google, the charter is a blueprint for tackling the online world's new challenges collaboratively with the wider ecosystem. This includes keeping the end user safe from online frauds and scams; cybersecurity for government and enterprise infrastructure; and building AI responsibly.

Lobana said while AI, like other technologies in the past, had unlocked creative potential, it had fuelled a surge in misinformation and deepfakes.

"Therefore our effort is to make sure that whatever content is created using our AI, there are watermarks on that, and then (the idea is) enabling and sharing tools through which a wider section of users can upload some of this content to be able to identify it. But like I said, it is about working with a broader ecosystem as well, because multiple AIs are used to generate some of this content," she said.

Combating misinformation and deepfakes is a work in progress and an area of deep focus for not just Google, but others in the industry, Lobana noted.