Sundar Pichai on deepfakes amid elections in India, US: ‘My highest priority is…’

Google is using AI and AI-assisted red-teaming to stay ahead of these problems, Sundar Pichai said.

Goole CEO Sundar Pichai talked about his company's highest priority amid elections in India and the US. He said, "We are going through a year where one out of three people (in the world) are participating in the electoral process which on its own is wonderful and is worth celebrating about. We have all come a long way as an industry over the past few years. At Google, we have invested in election integrity as our highest priority as a company, particularly in products like Search and YouTube."

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., during an interview in Mountain View, California, US. (Bloomberg)

Google is using AI and AI-assisted red-teaming to stay ahead of these problems, he said reflecting on how the company is focussed on understanding patterns in the world.

“We share information where appropriate with the right governments. It made a lot of progress. Having said that, given the pace of the technological progress with deepfakes, so far, we're still in a moment where as a society we're able to adjudicate what is real versus not,” he said.

He added, “With a combination of all the work that we are doing, for this year, I'm cautiously optimistic to be able to do our part and handle it well. The stakes get higher in the future.”

Meanwhile Elizabeth Reid, head of search at Google, said, “Can you access information in your language? Can you access it in a form you would understand? What’s exciting with Gemini and the era of AI is the ability to unlock many more of those questions and make it easier. For us to do more of the work so you can do less of the work when you’re trying to get information and explore your curiosity."