Informed Consent Form for Participation in a Public Consultation Platform

Purpose: This activity takes place in the framework of the research project AI4Deliberation (https://www.ai4dproject.eu/), funded by the European Union (Grant Agreement No 101178806). The objective of the AI4Deliberation project is to provide ethical AI tools and comprehensive guidance to support governments in institutionalising, using and evaluating multimodal, gamified and large-scale public consultation processes.

The purpose of this activity is to study citizen participation in public consultations through the use of a platform integrating artificial intelligence technologies.

With your participation you can: (i) (a) create an account on the platform, (ii) (b) participate in public consultations, and (c) provide comments in text, audio and/or video format.

Voluntary participation: Your participation is completely voluntary. You can refuse to participate without any justification. You can leave at any time and stop using the platform without any consequence.

Public Content Visibility: The platform acts as a public consultation environment. The content you submit (comments in text, audio and/or video format):

(a)may be published publicly;

b) it will be accessible to other users;

will remain available to the research team for transparency purposes.

You should not include any personal or sensitive information in your submissions. By signing this form you consent to the processing of your personal data (including your audio and video comments) for the purposes of the AI4Deliberation project.

Use of Artificial Intelligence and Content Management: The platform uses artificial intelligence to: a) content summary, b) extraction of positions and arguments, c) content detection and flagging for control, d) fact-checking, e) multimodal content analysis, including video analysis and video comprehension models (e.g. video-LLMs), g) for natural language interaction with the content and h) topic-modeling. The final decision on whether or not to publish a comment is taken exclusively by a human reviewer. There is no automated decision-making that produces legal or equivalent significant results.

The data you submit may be used to train, improve or evaluate artificial intelligence systems (e.g. fine-tuning models), including multimodal artificial intelligence models and video analysis systems, solely for research purposes under the AI4Deliberation project. Where possible, the processing is carried out in an anonymised form, with appropriate technical and organizational protection measures to protect your personal data.

External infrastructure: Data processing for AI functions can be carried out on AI4Deliberation computing infrastructures hosted on separate servers by the consultation platform. The processing is carried out on behalf of the Data Controller by authorized partners of the project, who are contractually bound to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 and the national legislation on personal data.

Data collected: During the use of the platform, the following may be collected: a) username (or alias), b) email address, c) participation content (text, audio or video). Your personal data (e.g. email) is not made public. However, the content you submit may be publicly accessible and subject to automated analysis for research purposes. Please note that through the content of your comments you may voluntarily disclose special categories of personal data, such as political or religious beliefs or ethnic origin.

Data protection: The processing is carried out in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 and national legislation. The legal basis for the processing of personal data, including special categories of data, is your explicit consent in accordance with Articles 6(1)(a) and 9(2)(a) of the GDPR. The Data Controller is ELLAK, which determines the purposes and means of processing. The processing is carried out by authorized partners of the AI4Deliberation project as processors or sub-processors on behalf of the Controller.

Data Retention Period: The data will be retained for up to six (6) months after the completion of the AI4Deliberation project. After this period, they will be safely deleted or fully anonymised so that participants cannot be identified.

Confidentiality: The data is stored securely and used exclusively for research purposes. Where possible, they will be analysed in aggregated or anonymised form.

Contact: For questions about the activity and data protection issues you can contact the Data Protection Officer (DPO) of ELLAK at: dataadmin@eellak.gr

Possible risks: Participation may include: a) public visibility of the views you express, b) possible indirect identification through the content you submit. We recommend that you do not share any personal or sensitive data in the content of your submissions.

Benefits: Your participation will help produce valuable findings to improve public consultation tools using artificial intelligence. Although there are no immediate personal benefits for you, your contribution is particularly important and appreciated.

Rights of the Data Subject

You have the following rights:

• access your data and obtain copies of the data;
• rectification of personal data;
• restriction of processing of personal data,
• erasure of personal data (where applicable). After 6 months from the end of the AI4Deliberation project, deletion is not possible due to anonymisation,
• submit a complaint to the competent authorities if you consider that the legislation has been breached.

Declaration of Consent

With the option "Yes, I consentYou confirm that:

• I have read and understood the above information.
• I participate voluntarily.
• I'm at least 18 years old.
• I consent to the processing of my data for the purposes described above.
• I consent to the use of my data for training, improvement and evaluation of artificial intelligence systems in the context of the AI4Deliberation project.