A/HRC/46/57 spewing hate speech against minorities. 17 This was not the first such occurrence. Another artificial intelligence bot, Microsoft’s Tay, caused controversy in 2016 and was shut down just 16 hours after its launch, as it had been manipulated into using Islamophobic and white supremacist slurs against minorities. Artificial intelligence used in interactive platforms face the same flaw: their algorithms allow bots to learn from past chat records or their interactions with current users. Given the large-scale prevalence of hate speech against minorities in social media, and the “teaching” or manipulation of artificial intelligence bots by racist and intolerant users, the bots are easily funnelled towards forms of intolerance and discrimination and themselves begin to spout hate speech against minorities. 74. There are other artificial intelligence issues of grave concern for the protection of the human rights of minorities that are outside the scope of the present report. One such issue is the use of facial recognition in artificial intelligence and digital technology by police and security forces and how it can interfere with the prohibition of discrimination and freedom of movement, expression and association, particularly the rights of specific groups, such as minorities and indigenous peoples.18 Another is the targeting of specific minorities by police forces through facial recognition technology that can conduct racial profiling and specifically pick out members of a minority. 19 These and other issues could be considered in a future thematic report. 75. Overall, there is a sense that the explosion of hate, misinformation and disinformation, and the harm, radicalization, polarization and dangers that they are increasingly creating, must somehow be addressed, leading to increased recommendations, proposals, regulatory pressure and measures.20 76. Countries such as Germany have passed laws on online hate speech obliging social media platforms to remove hate speech within strict time limits or face heavy fines. 21 However, some aspects of the legislation have led to grave concerns regarding freedom of expression, including the prohibition of the dissemination of information on the basis of vague and ambiguous criteria, such as “insult” or “defamation”.22 17 18 19 20 21 22 14 Justin McCurry, “South Korean AI chatbot pulled from Facebook after hate speech towards minorities”, Guardian, 14 January 2021. Studies confirm the existence of bias against ethnic minorities in many facial recognition systems. One study showed that Asian and African American minorities in the United States were up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white males, depending on the particular algorithm and type of search (Drew Harwell, “Federal study confirms racial bias of many facial-recognition systems, casts doubt on their expanding use”, Washington Post, 20 December 2019). Such bias in artificial intelligence, and the resulting false positives and false negatives, have obvious serious consequences for minorities. Several technology companies in China filed patents for various devices and systems that included identification of Uyghur and other ethnic minorities. See IPVM, “Patenting Uyghur tracking – Huawei, Megvii, more”, 12 January 2021. See, for example, Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, general recommendation No. 35 (2013) on combating racist hate speech; Council of Europe, recommendation No. R (97) 20 of the Committee of Ministers to member States on “hate speech”, 30 October 1997; European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, general policy recommendation No. 15 on combating hate speech, 8 December 2015; and OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, The Tallinn Guidelines on National Minorities and the Media in the Digital Age & Explanatory Note (The Hague, 2019). See the Network Enforcement Act, 1 September 2017. Available at www.gesetze-iminternet.de/netzdg/BJNR335210017.html (in German only). Letter dated 1 June 2017 from the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression addressed to the Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva. Available at www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Opinion/Legislation/OL-DEU-1-2017.pdf.