Election 2024: How Generative AI is Shaping the Future of Politics

As the 2024 election tsunami approaches, generative AI has the potential to rewrite the rules of political warfare with its mind-blowing ability to fabricate everything and anything: realistic speeches, images, videos and more.

Imagine this. Your favourite candidate gives a powerful speech...but it never actually happened. It was an AI-generated deepfake designed to manipulate you.

With 4.2 billion people expected to vote this year, the stakes for democracy have never been higher. Deepfakes could rapidly spread lies at a massive scale, swaying opinions and undermining truth itself.

This is the ultimate battleground. In the fight for democracy's soul, are we ready to wage war against AI's used for deception? Can our society survive digital fakery?

The Manipulative Power of Deepfakes

The advent of generative AI has catalysed a seismic shift, transforming deepfakes from a niche internet curiosity into a geopolitical instrument of influence. With profound implications, sophisticated digital fabrications possess the ability to not merely sway voter sentiment but to insidiously impose counterfeit narratives by putting words into the mouths of politicians and pundits. Video and voice AI manipulation have transcended novelty to emerge as potent tools, granting malicious actors the power to manipulate the public discourse on a grand scale for their insidious, strategic advantage.

Harvesting trust along with personal data

In the age of AI, it appears trust is not only engineered – it can be manufactured. Social media platforms collect a vast amount of personal data about our preferences, opinions, and even emotional responses. Harvesting our private information gives AI the raw material it needs to generate speeches, articles, and statements that might resonate perfectly with voters, essentially fabricating trust or distrust in candidates and causes. ?When this happens the line between authentic persuasion and algorithmic manipulation fades away.

• https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54915779
• https://www.brookings.edu/articles/data-misuse-and-disinformation-technology-and-the-2022-elections/

Content Creation at Scale

As such, generative AI is a double-edged sword. It can produce an endless stream of content that could sway narratives on a grand scale toward any desired outcome - a power that could be used to help, or misused to harm, by political campaigners and special interest groups.

For example, gun control advocates like March for Our Lives and Change The Ref have already used AI to synthesize the voices of gun violence victims as a lobbying tactic.

Generative AI could be exploited to manipulate voters en masse. This underscores the dual nature of it capabilities. Generative AI can be leveraged for positive societal aims such as persuading consumers toward healthy lifestyle choices, but also subverted for nefarious purposes to distort public discourse.

• https://www.wcbu.org/npr-news/2024-02-14/gun-violence-killed-them-now-their-voices-will-lobby-congress-to-do-more-using-ai

Generative AI and Elections

Fakery is already raising alarm bells among policymakers, tech companies, and citizens. Recent years have revealed instances where generative AI has potentially improperly influenced elections. For example, ‘spamouflage’, a campaign which uses a network of new or hijacked social media accounts to post disinformation across various platforms, such as Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Medium, Reddit, TikTok and LinkedIn, is becoming an increasing phenomenon.

Chicago Mayoral Election: In a recent Chicago mayoral election, an AI-generated, deepfake audio clip impersonating one candidate's voice circulated online, saying ‘These days people will accuse a cop of being bad if they kill one person that was running away. Back in my day, cops would kill, say, 17 or 18 civilians in their career and nobody would bat an eye’. Despite the candidate issuing a statement denouncing the video as fake and deceptive, it has been viewed thousands of times before it was deleted.

• https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2024/02/07/deepfake-artificial-intelligence-elections-chicago-paul-vallas-orig.cnn

New Hampshire Robocall Incident: A robocall impersonating President Biden's voice was circulated to voters, advising them not to vote in the state’s primary election. This deepfake voice was in fact artificially generated by an AI model and heard by thousands.

• https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/06/tech/nh-ag-robocall-update/index.html

Global Elections: ‘Spamoflague’ and deepfake campaigns are not isolated to the US alone. There have been reports of AI-generated deepfakes influencing elections in countries such as Slovakia and Nigeria. For example, a deepfake voice of Michal ?ime?ka, the leader of the Progressive Slovakia party, appeared and falsely purported to his discussing a plan to manipulate votes at polling stations with a journalist. The video was estimated to have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times before it was taken down.

• https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/01/politics/election-deepfake-threats-invs/index.html
• https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/truth-or-fake/20230116-nigeria-elections-2023-edited-video-of-peter-obi-goes-viral

These incidents underscore the potential for AI to disrupt the democratic process. Each demonstrate the urgent need for an appropriate response from social media companies and governments alike.?In America, some states including California, Michigan, Minnesota, Texas and Washington have passed laws that regulate deepfakes in elections. Yet, it appears that once a deepfake appears on social media, it can be nearly impossible to stop its spread.

The Liars Dividend: A Critical Challenge

What impact are AN increasing number of audio and video deepfakes having? The "Liar's Dividend" refers to how the mere existence of deepfakes enables people to dismiss genuine evidence as fake. This phenomenon could be especially disruptive during an election year, as it provides a means to undermine trust in authentic content and information.

What's stopping AI making copies of our voice and image to endorse things without our consent? Spreading misinformation could harm us, erode democracy, worsen social divides, and create unfair advantage. Misusing personal data to train AI violates our right to privacy, and individual autonomy but what or who is there to stop this from happening?

• https://www.brookings.edu/articles/misinformation-is-eroding-the-publics-confidence-in-democracy/
• https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-01-13-social-media-manipulation-political-actors-industrial-scale-problem-oxford-report
• https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/10/18/views-of-data-privacy-risks-personal-data-and-digital-privacy-laws/
• https://www.owe.com/resources/legalities/7-issues-regarding-use-someones-likeness/

The Response: A Race Against Time as Lawmakers and Tech Companies Scramble to Catch Up

In response, lawmakers are proposing bills to regulate deepfakes, while tech companies develop detection tools. However, keeping pace with rapidly evolving AI poses major challenges.

• https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/21/call-for-action-on-deepfakes-as-fears-grow-among-mps-over-election-threat
• https://www.npr.org/2024/02/08/1229641751/ai-deepfakes-election-risks-lawmakers-tech-companies-artificial-intelligence

The medias role in responsible reporting

The media plays a vital role in responsibly covering AI and deepfakes. Balanced reporting can help the public understand it risks without fuelling undue panic or scepticism.

While generative AI's full impact on future elections remains to be seen, it's clear this technology will continue shaping how we interact with information. As AI grows more sophisticated, so too must our ability to discern fact from fiction and protect democratic integrity.

What can we do?

• Stay informed as to how generative AI works and its potential to be misused.
• Be critical. Don't blindly accept what you online as fact. Verify its authenticity using reputable sources before believing what you see, read or share.
• Demand transparency. Advocate for clear labelling of AI-generated content and hold platforms accountable for spreading misinformation.

In Conclusion

Generative AI offers novel ways to engage and inform, and it can be a real force for good. But it also holds a darker potential, one that challenges our core notions of truth and trust in the age of digital politics.

Our collective response will shape not just the current electoral landscape, but the future of governance itself. We must carefully wield this double-edged sword, ensuring political discourse remains a contest of ideas, not manufactured realities.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

Share your concerns and ideas in the comments below – the conversation starts now.

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