AP – Artificial intelligence (AI) is supercharging the threat of election disinformation worldwide, making it easy for anyone with a smartphone and a devious imagination to create fake – but convincing – content aimed at fooling voters.
It marks a quantum leap from a few years ago, when creating phony photos, videos or audio clips required teams of people with time, technical skill and money. Now, using free and low-cost generative AI services from companies like Google and OpenAI, anyone can create high-quality “deepfakes” with just a simple text prompt.
A wave of AI deepfakes tied to elections in Europe and Asia has coursed through social media for months, serving as a warning for more than 50 countries heading to the polls this year.
“You don’t need to look far to see some people being clearly confused as to whether something is real or not,” said leading expert Henry Ajder in generative AI based in Cambridge, England.
The question is no longer whether AI deepfakes could affect elections, but how influential they will be, said Ajder, who runs a consulting firm called Latent Space Advisory.
As the United States presidential race heats up, FBI Director Christopher Wray recently warned about the growing threat, saying generative AI makes it easy for “foreign adversaries to engage in malign influence”.
With AI deepfakes, a candidate’s image can be smeared, or softened. Voters can be steered toward or away from candidates – or even to avoid the polls altogether. But perhaps the greatest threat to democracy, experts said, is that a surge of AI deepfakes could erode the public’s trust in what they see and hear.
Some recent examples of AI deepfakes include:
– A video of Moldova’s pro-Western president throwing her support behind a political party friendly to Russia.
– Audio clips of Slovakia’s liberal party leader discussing vote rigging.
– A video of an opposition lawmaker in Bangladesh – a conservative Muslim majority nation
– wearing an undergarment.
The novelty and sophistication of the technology makes it hard to track who is behind AI deepfakes. Experts said governments and companies are not yet capable of stopping the deluge, nor are they moving fast enough to solve the problem.
As the technology improves, “definitive answers about a lot of the fake content are going to be hard to come by”, Ajder said. Some AI deepfakes aim to sow doubt about candidates’ allegiances.
In Moldova, an Eastern European country bordering Ukraine, pro-Western President Maia Sandu has been a frequent target. One AI deepfake that circulated shortly before local elections depicted her endorsing a Russian-friendly party and announcing plans to resign.
ERODING TRUST
With presidential elections this year, the deepfakes aim “to erode trust in our electoral process, candidates and institutions – but also to erode trust between people,” said adviser to Sandu Olga Rosca.
In Taiwan, an AI deepfake gained attention earlier this year by stirring concerns about US interference in local politics.
The fake clip circulating on TikTok showed vice chairman of the United States (US) House Armed Services Committee US Republican Rob Wittman promising stronger US military support for Taiwan if the incumbent party’s candidates were elected in January.
Audio-only deepfakes are especially hard to verify because, unlike photos and videos, they lack telltale signs of manipulated content.
In Slovakia, audio clips resembling the voice of the liberal party chief were shared widely on social media just days before parliamentary elections. The clips purportedly captured him talking about rigging the vote.
It’s understandable that voters might fall for the deception, Ajder said, because humans are “much more used to judging with our eyes than with our ears.”
BLURRING REALITY
In the US, robocalls impersonating US President Joe Biden urged voters in New Hampshire to abstain from voting in January’s primary election.
The calls were later traced to a political consultant who said he was trying to publicise the dangers of AI deepfakes.
In poorer countries, where media literacy lags, even low-quality AI fakes can be effective.
Such was the case last year in Bangladesh, where opposition lawmaker Rumeen Farhana – a vocal critic of the ruling party – was falsely depicted wearing an undergarment.
The viral video sparked outrage in the conservative, majority-Muslim nation.
“They trust whatever they see on Facebook,” Farhana said. Experts are particularly concerned about upcoming elections in India, the world’s largest democracy and where social media platforms are breeding grounds for disinformation.
A CHALLENGE TO DEMOCRACY
Some political campaigns are using generative AI to bolster their candidate’s image.
In Indonesia, the team that ran the presidential campaign of Prabowo Subianto deployed a simple mobile app to build a deeper connection with supporters across the vast island nation.
The app enabled voters to upload photos and make AI-generated images of themselves with Subianto.
As the types of AI deepfakes multiply, authorities around the world are scrambling to come up with guardrails.
The European Union (EU) already requires social media platforms to cut the risk of spreading disinformation or “election manipulation.”
It will mandate special labeling of AI deepfakes starting next year, too late for the EU’s parliamentary elections in June. Still, the rest of the world is a lot further behind.
The world’s biggest tech companies recently – and voluntarily – signed a pact to prevent AI tools from disrupting elections. For example, the company that owns Instagram and Facebook has said it will start labeling deepfakes that appear on its platforms.
But deepfakes are harder to rein in on apps like the Telegram chat service, which did not sign the voluntary pact and uses encrypted chats that can be difficult to monitor.
Some experts worry that efforts to rein in AI deepfakes could have unintended consequences.
Well-meaning governments or companies might trample on the sometimes “very thin” line between political commentary and an “illegitimate attempt to smear a candidate”, said senior policy analyst Tim Harper at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington.
Major generative AI services have rules to limit political disinformation. But experts said it remains too easy to outwit the platforms’ restrictions or use alternative services that don’t have the same safeguards.
