On May, 27 our Association’s expert Olesya Tsybulko took part in OSCE ODIHR Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting “Media Literacy and Democracy” and stressed in her speech on opening the conference’s session on the urgent challenges for media, journalists’ activities and dissemination of the information that appears in the area of digital technologies and are connected with artificial intelligence on Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine, including Crimea.
ARC’s expert pointed on violation by aggressor state the UN General Assembly Resolution 78/265 on issues of promotion of safe, secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems that will also benefit sustainable development for all. She pointed that aggressor’s improper and malicious design, development, deployment and use of artificial intelligence systems, such as without adequate safeguards and in a manner inconsistent with international law, pose risks that could hinder progress.
Such a situation is the example of Russia-committed information manipulations, frauds with origins of artificial intelligence-generated or manipulated digital content and it creates strong risks for media and information literacy, stressed ARC’s expert.
Olesya Tsybulko pointed on our Association’s researches on the aggressor’s manipulations with artificial intelligence systems in Crimea and Sevastopol, including industrial espionage and propaganda, and usage of such systems for the so-called “security sphere”, but de-facto for social networks total monitoring and implementation of static and mobile video systems that allow to “calculate” a person by their face.
Expert added that such systems are used by the aggressor’s punitive structures for control of any public gatherings in the occupied Crimea, especially against civil journalists and monitors of human rights violations. She pointed that occupying “authorities” announced plans to cover in the nearest time all public spaces in the peninsula such as video-survey systems.
Ms. Tsybulko pointed that it is directly connected with total repression against independent journalists and media in Crimea and such illegal “administrative practice” was established in a decision of the European Court on Human Rights in the interstate case against Russia regarding Crimea already. After the Russian broad-scale invasion such Crimean journalists as Remzi Bekirov, Iryna Danilovych and others were arrested and Osman Arifmemetov, Vladislav Yesypenko and Timur Ibragimov, got illegal “sentences”, ARC’s expert reminded.
Expert added that the Kremlin also uses the so-called “standardization” mechanism to take control of neural networks and manually distribute them into “classes” in order to weed out those whose “quality” does not correspond to the purposes of Russian aggression, disinformation, genocidal calls, hate speech and racist incitements.
Ms. Tsybulko pointed that two months ago we published research, which stated that so-called “Crimean universities” and “enterprises” could become a tool for the “legalization” of artificial intelligence technologies stolen by the Russian intelligence services in democratic countries or in communist China.
And just two days after our analysis was published, the Crimean “media” completely “accidentally” reported in April 2024 that the illegal “Crimean federal university” had inaugurated a “center for artificial intelligence and big data analysis”. But de facto this center has worked actively as a minimum since 2023 and such destructive policies must be a subject of special OSCE attention, stressed ARC’s representative.
Association’s expert added that separate OSCE research must be done on challenges connected with artificial intelligence and information dissemination in conditions of interstate conflicts and relevant disinformation, genocidal calls, hate speech and racist incitements in media and social networks.
