| NOTAS: | "While advances in artificial intelligence (AI) offer benefits for society, they have also been used to increase the scale and efficiency of digital repression. According to Freedom House’s new report—Freedom on the Net 2023: The Repressive Power of Artificial Intelligence—governments are leveraging automated systems to strengthen their information controls and hone forms of online censorship. Simultaneously, distributors of disinformation have turned to AI tools to fabricate images, audio, and text, further blurring the lines between reality and deception. The report finds that while innovations in AI contributed to the 13th consecutive year of global decline in internet freedom, older forms of digital repression continued to proliferate. Iran suffered the year’s worst score decline as authorities shut down internet services and blocked social media to stifle antigovernment protests. In two record highs, people in at least 55 countries faced legal repercussions for expressing themselves online, and governments in 41 countries blocked websites hosting political, social, and religious speech. Both practices persisted in China, which retained its title as the world’s worst environment for internet freedom for the ninth consecutive year." |
