Jumio, the leading provider of automated, AI-driven identity verification, risk signals and compliance solutions, today released new findings from its Jumio 2024 Online Identity Study, revealing growing concern among the general public on the political influence AI and deepfakes may have on Singapore’s next election, and how they might influence trust in online media. 

Developments in AI and machine learning have made it much easier to create compelling fake news stories, altered images, videos or audio recordings. This technology can fabricate events, statements and appearances, spreading misinformation quickly and deceiving viewers who often take these false narratives as legitimate news.

Recent examples highlight the real-world impact of deepfakes on political processes. Indonesia’s social media channels saw AI being abused for political purposes prior to February’s elections, including a long-deceased army general endorsing the incumbent. In Singapore, officials are considering a temporary ban on political deepfakes ahead of the next general elections, which have yet to be called but must happen by November 2025. South Korea took a similar approach, imposing a 90-day ban on deepfakes before its April 2024 election.

Jumio’s study examined the views of more than 8,000 adult consumers, split evenly across the United Kingdom, United States, Singapore and Mexico, providing a comprehensive global perspective on the impact of deepfakes. The data revealed that:

• 83% of Singapore consumers are worried about the potential for AI and deepfakes to influence upcoming elections in their country, compared to 75% globally.

Singapore consumers feel deepfakes undermine trust in politicians and media, with 76% reporting increased skepticism in the content they see online, compared to the last election.Singapore consumers are most confident in their ability to easily spot a deepfake of a political figure or celebrity — 60% compared to just 33% in the UK, 37% in the US and 51% in Mexico. 66% of consumers in Singapore say they trust political news that they see online, despite the possibility of encountering audio, video and image deepfakes, compared to the global average of 43%.

Google u-turn on web cookies

Google is dropping plans to eliminate cookies from its Chrome web browser, making a sudden U-turn on four years of work to phase out a technology that helps businesses tracks users online.

The company had been working on retiring third-party cookies, which are snippets of code that log user information, as part of an effort to overhaul user privacy options on Chrome. But the proposal, also known as Privacy Sandbox, had instilled fears in the online advertising industry that any replacement technology would leave even less room for online ad rivals.

In a blog post on Monday, Google said it decided to abandon the plan after considering the impact of the changes on publishers, advertisers and “everyone involved in online advertising”.

The U.K.’s primary competition regulator, which has been involved in oversight of the Privacy Sandbox project, said Google will, instead, give users the option to block or allow third-party cookies on the browser.

Google will “introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time,” Anthony Chavez, vice president of Privacy Sandbox, said in the post. “We’re discussing this new path with regulators, and will engage with the industry as we roll this out.”

Advertisers use cookies to target ads to web users but privacy campaigners say they can be used to track users across the internet.

Google first proposed scrapping cookies in 2020, but the deadline for finishing the work had slipped a few times. Chrome is the world’s dominant web browser, and many others like Microsoft’s Edge are based on the company’s Chromium technology.