Tanzania, May 17 -- AS Tanzania gears up for the General Elections in October 2025, the government has called on telecom companies to develop specialised Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems to counter deepfake audio and video content intended to mislead the public.

Minister for Information, Communication and Information Technology, Mr Jerry Silaa, issued the directive on Friday when winding up the budget estimates debate for his docket for the 2025/26 financial year in Parliament.

The Minister said that in efforts to tackle online fraud and deception, the government has already rolled out an AI-based alert system capable of detecting fraudulent messages and issuing real-time warnings to users.

"We have launched an AI system that scans...