The Year of the AI Election Wasn’t Quite What Everyone Expected

Many pieces of AI-generated content were used to express support or fanfare for specific candidates. For example, there was an AI-generated video of Donald Trump and Elon Musk dancing to the Bees’ song “Stayin’ Alive.” It has been shared millions of times on social mediaIncluding Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican.

“It’s all about social cues. It’s all the reason why people share this stuff. It’s not AI. You see the effect of a polarized electorate,” said Bruce Schneier, a public interest technologist and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School. “It’s not like we’ve had perfect selection throughout our history and now suddenly there’s AI and it’s all misinformation.”

But don’t get it twisted – there was Misleading deepfakes spread during this election. For example, in the days before the elections in Bangladesh, Deepfakes are promoted online encouragingly Supporters of one of the country’s political parties boycotted the vote. Sam Gregory, program director of the nonprofit Witness, which helps people use technology to advocate for human rights and runs a rapid-response detection program for civil society organizations and journalists, said his team has seen an increase in cases of deepfakes this year.

“In multiple electoral contexts,” he says, “there are examples of both actual deceptive or misleading use of synthetic media in audio, video and image formats that have misled journalists or been impossible for them to fully verify or challenge.” What this reveals, he says, is that currently The tools and systems in place to identify AI-generated media still lag behind the pace at which the technology is developing. In locations outside the United States and Western Europe, these detection tools Even less reliable.

“Fortunately, AI has not been used fraudulently in most elections or majors, but it is very clear that there is a gap between identification tools and access for those who need it most,” Gregory said. “This is no time for complacency.”

The existence of synthetic media, he says, means that politicians are able to claim that real media is fake – a phenomenon known as the “liar’s dividend”. In AugustDonald Trump has alleged that images showing large crowds at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris are AI-generated. (they weren’t)