Article 18 Alliance Statement — Towards a FoRB-sensitive AI policy

The aim of this statement is to recognise the significance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB). It highlights aspects of AI relevant to policy makers seeking to advance FoRB-sensitive policy making.

Advancements in AI technology bring both exciting opportunities and significant challenges for policy development. In this rapidly evolving landscape, it is crucial to proactively address how AI can impact FoRB. Emerging technologies, such as AI, have the potential to be used as a force for good, as well as the potential to be used as a tool for generating and facilitating the spread of harmful content which can lead to a range of harms including violence, conflict and mass suffering.  AI poses new challenges to balancing protection of freedom of expression, FoRB and other human rights.

We, the undersigned who are members of the Article 18 Alliance/ IRFBA, acknowledge in this statement the importance of harnessing the power of AI to promote FoRB and preventing its abuse to the detriment of FoRB.

(I.) Advancing FoRB-affirming innovations and uses of AI:

(1) Recognising AI’s potential to enhance pro-FoRB education through accessible software and innovative audio-visual edutainment, we will examine how we can promote the safe and secure use of AI technologies that encourages FoRB-sensitive education and awareness-raising.

(2) In view of the potential uses of AI technologies in preserving heritage belonging to religious minorities, including their memory and sites of importance, we will promote the use of AI for religious minority heritage preservation and dissemination.

(3) In view of the potential for AI to be used to provide rapid translations (even if of varying levels of precision), we recognise that this resource can help expose and challenge the use of hate speech across different languages.

(4) We welcome the opportunities for communities to use AI to express religious, cultural and linguistic facets of their identities that encourage diversity and recognition of all. 

(5) Noting that, with accurate data sets, AI-generated information can potentially serve to educate and counter harmful misrepresentations, assist in raising awareness of freedom of religion or belief worldwide and strengthen human rights. We will encourage conversations between AI companies and civil society actors regarding the content of AI-generated representations of different faiths.

(II.) Countering FoRB-violating and abusing AI uses:

(1) Aware of the potential and actual ways in which AI is misused to create and exacerbate harms, including violence and conflict relating to FoRB, including through deep fakes and other forms of AI-generated disinformation, we will consider measures to raise awareness of the risks and opportunities relating to AI among governments, digital platforms, religious leaders, law-enforcers, local communities and media.

(2) Believing in the importance of nurturing the peaceful co-existence of individuals and communities of different religions and beliefs, we will consider appropriate ways to prevent AI systems and applications (e.g. discriminatory targeting algorithms, facial recognition technologies, and predictive policing tools) from harming vulnerable members of religious or belief communities.  

(3) We will explore ways of enabling actors to develop, and apply, AI systems for the prevention of atrocities and violence against vulnerable communities such as through the development of early warning systems and real time monitoring. We will draw particular attention to how FoRB-champions can hold violators accountable through the assistance of AI applications.

We will also endeavour to support the presence of community-level first responders who have the skillset and experience to identify FoRB-abusive use of AI and are able to quickly report to appropriate bodies an incident before it can escalate, or exacerbate, including into offline hate or violence.

(4) Recognising the importance of technology companies understanding the right to FoRB, we will encourage them to adopt a human rights-based approach and Safety by Design approach to the development of their platforms.  We encourage dialogue and collaboration between companies and stakeholders on FoRB-sensitive AI development, as well as conducting regular FoRB impact assessments on AI systems and sharing best practice in such appraisal processes.

In signing this statement, we, the undersigned members of the Article 18 Alliance, proactively commit to engaging with AI’s role in influencing FoRB giving due importance to:

(1) protecting members of communities who may be vulnerable from being targeted through AI-related attacks on grounds of their faith or beliefs;

(2) developing and sharing effective policies to pro-actively and reactively prevent AI from being misused to mobilize violence and conflict; and

(3) leveraging the Article 18 Alliance cross-governmental collaborations to proactively ensure that the impact of AI on FoRB in its intersection with other rights is explicitly recognised in global frameworks on the future of AI.

Signatories: Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, Republic of Kosovo, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.