Now deepfakes will be controlled! MCA and Meta are jointly preparing WhatsApp helpline

Misinformation Combat Alliance (MCA) and Meta have announced the opening of a dedicated fact-checking helpline on WhatsApp in response to the growing threat posed by deepfakes and the difficulties associated with misleading AI-generated content. The general public will be able to use this helpline starting in March 2024.

To combat misinformation and its effects, businesses, organisations, associations, institutions, and associations from various industries come together to form the MCA. Through this initiative, MCA and its independent research organisations and fact-checkers will be able to recognise misinformation that has been spread, especially deepfakes. Users will be able to detect deepfakes by providing WhatsApp chatbots with broadcasted data.

Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu are the three regional languages that WhatsApp's chatbot will support in addition to English. In addition, MCA plans to establish a central unit for the analysis of deepfakes to handle all messages received through the WhatsApp helpline. Along with industry partners and digital labs, they will collaborate closely with fact-checking organisations' members to evaluate and validate content, respond to messages appropriately, and dispel misleading information.

On Monday, the government reaffirmed that social media intermediaries and internet media platforms in India have a legal obligation to refrain from hosting false material and deepfakes on their platforms. Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, while giving information about the launch of the WhatsApp helpline by Meta and MCA in an ex-post, said that it is good to use reliable fact-checkers to label the misleading information.