Around one billion voters will head to polls all over the world this year, while wily campaigns and underfunded election officials will face pressure to use AI for efficiencies.
Why it matters: Conditions are ripe for bad actors to use generative AI to amplify efforts to suppress votes, libel candidates and incite violence.
- New companies providing powerful generative AI have untested and relatively small election integrity teams, while older companies have cut back those teams — at its peak in 2019, Meta’s integrity staff numbered over 500 globally.
- AI may end up disenfranchising voters as election officials use new tools for a variety of tasks, from identifying and removing ineligible citizens from voting registries to AI-powered signature matching.
- Chatbots and platform algorithms risk serving up inaccurate information to voters.
- It’s the first time in 60 years that the U.S. and U.K. are voting for new administrations in the same year and the first time since 2004 that the U.S. and EU are.
- AI is just one category in a growing list of problems for election officials froma poll worker shortage to violent threats and cybersecurity attacks.
- That tension will play out against a backdrop of Americans having little trust in the companies deploying AI and a plurality believing AI could alter election results.
- The few guardrails in place are voluntary — including those demanded by the White House.
- YouTube is among the platforms that reversed bans on election result denialism in 2023, while Facebook currently restricts ads that deny “upcoming” or “ongoing” election results, but not past ones.
- YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram now require labeling of election-related advertisements created with AI.
- The winning candidatein the country’s November presidential race, right-wing libertarian Javier Milei, used AI to depict his rivals as Communists and emperors — but he cruised to victory by 3 million votes, far ahead of the 44,000 votes that decided the 2020 U.S. presidential race.
- Arizona election officials conducted a two-day exercise in December, designed to help them spot and respond to deepfake videos.
- America’s decentralized election systems also helps to limit any damage due to misuse of AI — most of the action takes place in local races and the elections themselves are managed by 3,000 or so counties.
- Election officials need to publish guidelines on their planned and actual use of AI by late spring, per President Biden’s AI Executive Order which designates election infrastructure as a type of critical infrastructure.
- “Panic responsibly. It is important to not to freak out about every single thing,” per Katie Harbath, former head of election safety at Meta.
- Social media companies should allow for “free speech for humans, not computers,” Eric Schmidt told CNBC.