SINGAPORE: Singapore’s parliament passed a law on Tuesday ( Oct 15 ) that would ban deepfakes and other digitally manipulated content of candidates during elections.
WHAT THE BILL IS ABOUT
The Ministry of Digital Development and Information ( MDDI) tabled the amendment bill last month that prohibits the publication of digitally generated or manipulated content during elections that accurately depicts a candidate saying or acting in a way that they did not do or say.
This will only qualify to vote advertisements that show applicants running online.
It will only qualify if four conditions are met, and it will only apply after the petition of election is issued and until the poll closes.
- The information is online poll marketing, where its goal is to advertise, secure or prejudice the political prospects of a party or candidate.
- The material is online generated or manipulated.
- A participant is said or acting in a way that the content does not.
- The content is so accurate that some viewers or listeners had fairly assume that the candidate actually said or did that.
It would be a legal offense to submit the information if it fulfills all four requirements, along with sharing or republishing it.  ,
MDDI recently stated that slight adjustments, such as beauty filtering, will not be covered because they do not accurately get the candidate acting or speaking in a manner that they did not do.  ,
Animated characters or pictures, as well as leisure glad and cartoons that are not genuine, are also excluded.
It does n’t matter whether the content is favorable or unfavorable to any candidate, said Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo in her speech on Tuesday.  ,
She added that the release of such prohibited information during an vote time, as well as the boosting, sharing and reposting of the material, will be an infraction.