Early this year, watchdogs and technologists warned that artificial intelligence would sow chaos into the 2024 U.S. elections, spreading misinformation via deepfakes and personalized political advertising campaigns. Those fears spread to the public: More than half of U.S. adults are “extremely or very concerned” about AI’s negative impacts on the election, according to a recent Pew poll.
Yet with the election one week away, fears of the election being derailed or defined by AI now appear to have been overblown. Political deepfakes have been shared across social media, but have been just a small part of larger misinformation campaigns. The U.S. Intelligence Community wrote in September that while foreign actors like Russia were using generative AI to “improve and accelerate” attempts to influence voters, the tools did not “revolutionize such operations.”
Tech insiders acknowledge 2024 was not a breakthrough year for generative AI in politics. “There are a lot of campaigns and organizations using AI in …