French Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies, Clara Chappaz, met with Viginum over the rise of foreign interference in the European Union, according to Euractiv.
Viginum’s mission, established in 2021, is to detect foreign interference aimed at manipulating French public debate on social media. In a meeting on Tuesday with the Viginum team and its head Marc-Antoine Brillant, Chappaz expressed hope for “full and complete co-operation from the platforms with competent authorities.”
Over the past 16 months, Viginum’s investigations were taken up by French politicians, who denounced eight foreign interference campaigns. French authorities also uncovered 43 disinformation campaigns targeting the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris.
Cases included an artificial intelligence-generated video claiming that pollution in the River Seine was “comparable to the Ganges,” according to Viginum.
The company faces two major challenges: the proliferation of fake information in public debates and the growing difficulty to distinguish between content created by humans and AI-generated content.
Viginum uses artificial intelligence tools to analyse personal data on platforms in France with more than five million monthly active users. The platforms share their reports with content moderation body Arcom, the French coordinator of digital services under the Digital Services Act (DSA).
