Facebook on Monday said it had blocked or removed nearly one million accounts every day using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, days ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in India.

“For a year and a half, we’ve been working to bring a comprehensive and strategic approach to our work on the Indian elections,” Ajit Mohan, Facebook’s managing director and vice-president for India, said in a blog post.

He stressed that Facebook was “absolutely committed” to maintaining the integrity of the elections and help make sure the elections are fair and free from interference, both foreign and domestic.

“This work is done across dozens of teams, both in India and around the globe, and began more than 18 months ago with a detailed planning and risk assessment across our platforms. The findings allowed us to concentrate our work on key areas, including blocking and removing fake accounts; fighting the spread of misinformation; stopping abuse by domestic actors; spotting attempts at foreign meddling; and taking action against inauthentic coordinated campaigns,” he said.

Stating that Facebook has become better at using AI and machine learning to fight interference, he said these tools help the firm block or remove approximately one million accounts a day. “They also help us, at a large scale, identify abusive or violating content, quickly locate it across the platform and remove it in bulk. This dramatically reduces its ability to spread,” Mr. Mohan said, adding that Facebook would expand this initiative by adding 24 new languages — including 16 for India — to the company’s automatic translation system.

“Building on lessons we have learned over the past two years, this week, we will activate new regional operation centres focussed on election integrity, in Singapore and Dublin,” he said.

These teams include engineers, operations specialists and data scientists, and will work closely with Facebook staff at the firm’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S., as well as with local experts in Delhi.

“This structure helps strengthen our global coordination and speed our response times, adding another layer of defense against false news, misinformation, hate speech and voter suppression,” he added.

Mr. Mohan said the company wanted to empower people to decide what to read, trust and share for themselves. When fact-checkers find a story to be false, they will write an article that reports on the actual facts at hand, he said. “We include these articles as Related Articles immediately below a story in News Feed. We also show the debunked articles lower in people’s feed,” he added.