TAWAU: The use of artificial intelligence (AI), including its misuse, is expected to influence the coming 17th Sabah State Election (PRN17), marking a new challenge in the nation’s democratic process.
Acknowledging this, Communications Minister Datuk Fahmi Fadzil said the possibility of AI being exploited by opportunistic parties through manipulations such as “deepfakes” (fabricated images, videos and audio) could not be ruled out.
“We will be holding discussions soon with relevant authorities, including the Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM) and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), to assess preparedness in facing the issue.
“This is necessary as we anticipate that the coming state election will see an increase in AI-generated content, including prohibited material,” he said when asked on his Ministry’s approach to address manipulated AI content and “deepfakes” during the coming election.
“As an early reminder, I hope all contesting parties will compete fairly and not rely on slanderous deepfakes in an attempt to win the election,” he said.
He said his Ministry recently held discussions with TikTok representatives, highlighting several areas for improvement, including issues related to the platform’s moderators.
According to him, TikTok must strengthen these aspects as moderators play an important role in identifying prohibited materials in line with the platform’s community guidelines.
“There are also issues with platforms that rely heavily on AI to detect content that violates their guidelines,” he added.
At the same time, Fahmi admitted there are challenges in detecting the misuse of AI through deepfakes, particularly when these are not distributed directly via social media but through internet messaging systems such as WhatsApp, Telegram and others.
He noted that this issue is a key concern for his Ministry, given that these platforms use security features or secret codes such as end-to-end encryption (E2EE).
For the record, E2EE means the contents of messages remain confidential from start to finish and cannot be scanned by intruders, hackers, third parties, service providers or even governments.
