The phenomenon of deepfakes as part of health education

Primary school students will learn about the dangers of deepfake. Katarzyna Lubnauer, Secretary of State at the Ministry of National Education, informed the President of the Personal Data Protection Office (UODO), Mirosław Wróblewski, that his remark regarding the general education programme had been taken into account.

The relevant change was introduced by the Ministry of Education to the draft amendment to the regulation on the core curriculum of pre-school education and the core curriculum of general education for primary school, including for students with moderate or significant intellectual disabilities. Accordingly, primary school students from grades 4 to 6 will learn about the risks associated with deepfakes as part of health education classes. An additional requirement has been added to the draft regulation in its current version under the heading 'Internet and addiction prevention'. According to it, the classes will discuss 'threats arising from the misuse of information and communication technologies, including cyberbullying, hate, hate speech, cyber reality creation, patostreaming, internet and gaming addiction, phishing, deepfake, identity theft and dangerous online contacts, among others child grooming and blackmail, including peer-blackmail, discuss the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence and virtual reality (VR)'.

The President of the Personal Data Protection Office included his postulate regarding the need to conduct educational activities among young people on the subject of deepfake in his comments on the draft amendment to the regulation on the core curriculum of pre-school education and the core curriculum of general education for primary school, as well as in a subsequent letter addressed to the Ministry of Education.

Mirosław Wróblewski, the President of of the Personal Data Protection Office justified his request by the fact that the use of tools based on artificial intelligence, which are becoming one of the most important and fastest growing threats in the sphere of information and cybersecurity, is becoming more and more common. He pointed out that technologies enabling the generation of realistic but false visual and sound materials are becoming more easily available, cheaper to use and more difficult to detect. This increases the risk of disinformation, manipulation of public opinion, extortion, violations of personal rights and impersonation of individuals or institutions. Therefore, he argued that these phenomena should be counteracted at every regulation opportunity aimed at protecting the rights of children and youth.