News agencies are increasingly challenged by fabricated imagery, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned

The increasing availability of deepfake technology is pushing the world into "informational barbarism," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned, urging news agencies to increase investment in fact-checking and video verification.

Zakharova identified deepfakes as global concern during a workshop at the 19th General Assembly of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA), which Russia hosted last week. Malicious actors are using every opportunity to deploy "poison pills of lies" against their targets, and are turning to generative content to achieve their aims, the diplomat said.

"Just a couple of years ago deepfake was a novelty that could only confuse people, but now the quality and quantity of deepfake videos raises the question whether humanity is equipped to deal with such attacks," Zakharova said. "I don't have a definitive answer."

The Russian Foreign Ministry works to disprove falsified content involving its staff, including Minister Sergey Lavrov and Zakharova herself. But as mount of fake content increases, so does the time required to counter them, she said. The problem is multifaceted, as seen in the growing use of deepfakes by scammers, and demands a "systemic and comprehensive" international response.

"It is self-evident that news agencies and leading media outlets need entire sections dedicated to fact-checking that are trained to detect technological tricks, which are used to present non-credible information as credible," she said.

News agencies are naturally at the forefront of the fight against falsified imagery, since they handle the largest flow of raw information in the media ecosystem, Zakharova pointed out.

The Foreign Ministry launched a dedicated campaign against "fake news" in 2017 and has since released more than 5,000 regular rebuttals and 350 in-depth exposes of what it considers informational attacks against Russia's national interests, the official said.

(RT.com)