The mainstream availability of generative AI has set this Election Day apart from 2020, changing everything from how voters access election information to the increased volume and sophistication of bogus information.
The 2024 election marks the first time AI tools have been widely accessible to the public, political actors, and foreign threat agents alike. How they are being used or misused could impact upon the democratic process.
“We’re clearly beginning to see the methods and ways in which AI is going to shape democratic discourse now and into the future,” Alexandra Reeve Givens, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) told Newsweek, with the caveat that “the effects of AI may still be small versus what some people had anticipated.”
Givens described generative AI as “the magnifier to existing influence efforts” that can make disinformation from foreign threat agents “cheaper, easier, perhaps more convincing.”
Voter Misinformation and the Role of Chatbots
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