📋 Tender Overview
Bavarias Secretary of State for the Interior Sandro Kirchner discussed the current challenges in the field of disinformation and artificial intelligence on the podium with Digital Minister Dr. Fabian Mehring today at the Bavarian Digital Summit in Munich. The danger posed by manipulated media identities in the digital information space, so-called deepfakes, is great, because the technological possibilities are becoming more and more sophisticated - also thanks to AI. This means that these fakes can appear absolutely authentic and deliberately destroy trust, emphasized Kirchner. Everyone should therefore be skeptical, especially when it comes to sensationalist posts on the Internet: It never hurts to look for further sources or fact checks. And when in doubt, its better to double-check what exactly youre liking or sharing.
In the area of disinformation, Kirchner described the so-called doppelganger campaign as particularly perfidious and meticulous and explained: Forgeries from established news sites were published on a large scale and entire fake media were created on the Internet in order to spread disinformation and feed it into social media and platforms. The large-scale campaign aimed to sow doubts about liberal and democratic values by spreading deliberate misinformation and pro-Russian narratives. Presumably Russian actors in particular used the approach for their propaganda; just this summer, the Bavarian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution published extensive findings on this.
In addition, Kirchner also referred to the Bavaria Alliance against Disinformation, a joint initiative of the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior and the Bavarian Ministry of Digital Affairs, which was launched this year. During the European elections, we and our partners from the Bavaria Alliance have already provided comprehensive information on disinformation in order to strengthen trust in our democracy, said Kirchner. Especially with a view to the upcoming new elections to the Bundestag, it is important to me as Secretary of State for the Interior to reach and inform the people of Bavaria even better. We have to stay on the ball and try out a variety of approaches to counter disinformation even better.
