It’s a presidential election year, and many experts are sounding the alarm to say generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools may upend the process. People specializing in AI say that these tools have made it easier to spread misinformation and sway an election, and it’s not yet known what effect it will have this November.

In the three years since President Joe Biden was sworn into office, little has changed for those who believe his election in 2020 was fraudulent. This perception has been fed in part by social media and certain cable news channels, who claim to this day that former President Donald Trump won the election but was denied the presidency through cheating. Despite numerous legal challenges, this allegation was never substantiated.

Social media’s potential role in spreading misinformation

Furthermore, X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) cut its outsourced content moderators in 2022, creating a hospitable environment for misinformation. That means manipulated media that appears authentic – “deepfakes” – may find a hospitable environment there or on any other social media platform that doesn’t prioritize cracking down on them.

“I expect a tsunami of misinformation,” said AI expert Oren Etzioni in a recent article. “I hope to be proven wrong. But the ingredients are there, and I am completely terrified.”

What do other experts have to say about AI’s impact on the 2024 election?

Ian Bremmer, founder of the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, said in their “2024 Top Risks Report” that ungoverned AI threatens election integrity, and human politicians will be unable to keep pace with its rapid advancement.

“Generative AI will be used by domestic and foreign actors – notably Russia – to influence electoral campaigns, stoke division, undermine trust in democracy, and sow political chaos on an unprecedented scale,” he wrote. “Sharply divided Western societies, where voters increasingly access information from social media echo chambers, will be particularly vulnerable to manipulation. A crisis in global democracy is today more likely to be precipitated by AI-created and algorithm-driven disinformation than any other factor.”

Daniel I. Weiner and Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit law and public policy institute, said that this “synthetic media” poses a significant threat to elections and cited an example of how it’s already being used to sway voters.

Phony images have already been used

“Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign released AI-generated images of former President Donald Trump embracing Anthony Fauci, who has become a lightning rod among Republican primary voters because of the Covid-19 mitigation policies he advocated,” they said. “Given the astonishing speed at which deepfakes and other synthetic media (that is, media created or modified by automated means, including with AI) have developed over just the past year, we can expect even more sophisticated deceptive communications to make their way into political contests in the coming months and years.”

Archon Fung of Harvard Kennedy School and Lawrence Lessig of Harvard University wrote in Government Technology that “reinforcement learning,” which relies upon machine-learning and trial-and-error, can create a string of messages designed to influence your vote. This technique could undoubtedly come into play in November and play out in several different ways.

“One possibility is sending likely opponent voters information about nonpolitical passions that they have in sports or entertainment to bury the political messaging they receive,” they said. “Another possibility is sending off-putting messages — for example, incontinence advertisements — timed to coincide with opponents’ messaging. And another is manipulating voters’ social media friend groups to give the sense that their social circles support its candidate.”

Robert Weissman, president of the government watchdog group Public Citizen, said deepfakes created with generative AI could influence any election, but never more so than one in which the candidates are running neck-and-neck.

How ‘deepfakes’ could easily sway the election

“A deepfake released shortly before Election Day — perhaps showing a candidate drunk, or speaking incoherently, or consorting with a disreputable figure — could easily sway a close election,” he said.

He added that if deepfakes become pervasive enough, they might eventually have the opposite effect of what their creators intended.

“The prevalence of deepfakes could enable candidates to deny the validity of authentic content, dismissing it simply as fake,” he said.

Despite the ominous predictions about the influence of generative AI on elections, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said that we already have the tools to fight it. He said that if voters do their due diligence and verify a video or other media before sharing it, it would go a long way toward protecting election integrity, no matter who’s on the ballot in November.

“The bottom line is this: AI is not all terrible,” he said. “There are tons of benefits to it, but it’s the stuff we need to be careful of that we’re training for. And really what it comes down to is the basics. If we are following basic process, basic protocol, basic procedures, double checking whenever something happens before making major decisions regarding our operations or sharing information, we’re going to be in pretty good shape coming into what could be a hostile environment.”