{"id":6164,"date":"2024-01-16T23:00:15","date_gmt":"2024-01-16T23:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tup.kxe.temporary.site\/can-tech-companies-protect-elections-from-ai-powered-manipulation\/"},"modified":"2024-01-16T23:00:15","modified_gmt":"2024-01-16T23:00:15","slug":"can-tech-companies-protect-elections-from-ai-powered-manipulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/okdesign.ca\/en\/can-tech-companies-protect-elections-from-ai-powered-manipulation\/","title":{"rendered":"Can tech companies protect elections from AI-powered manipulation?"},"content":{"rendered":"


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This year\u2019s elections are the first with generative AI tools that can be as easily used by individuals as large organizations to produce misinformation at scale. Even as tech companies push out ways to prevent and detect false content, there are serious concerns that they won\u2019t be enough.<\/p>\n

Why we care. <\/strong>The impact of this is unlikely to be limited to political marketing. Consumers \u2014 especially younger ones \u2014 are increasingly distrustful of advertising. A recent U.K. study<\/a> found only 13% of the population trusted ad executives. The driving forces include the rise of \u201cfake news\u201d and anti-vaccination campaigns. The spread of political misinformation will erode trust on other topics as well.<\/p>\n

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Yesterday, as the Iowa caucuses kicked off the U.S. primary season, OpenAI became the latest company to take steps to protect voters. The company said people aren\u2019t allowed to use its tools for political campaigning and lobbying to create chatbots that impersonate candidates, other real people and local governments.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we prepare for elections in 2024 across the world\u2019s largest democracies, our approach is to continue our platform safety work by elevating accurate voting information, enforcing measured policies and improving transparency,\u201d the company said in a blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last month Google said it would restrict election queries to its AI chatbot, while Facebook parent Meta barred campaigns from using AI advertising tools last year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dig deeper: <\/em><\/strong>When politics ignores marketing: A cautionary tale<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

OpenAI also said it plans to incorporate digital credentials from the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) into images generated by Dall-E. Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe and Getty are also working with C2PA on this issue.<\/p>\n

While these are good actions, the problem is they only apply to those companies\u2019 products, said Chris Penn, co-founder and Chief Data Scientist at TrustInsights.ai.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to see generative AI used and abused in frankly unbelievable ways,\u201d said Penn. \u201cWe have a whole bunch of state and non-state actors who would love nothing more than to completely screw over the US election process and the tools that you use to build these generative deceptions are freely available. They cannot be regulated because they\u2019re open source.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"2024\"2024<\/figure>\n
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However, companies are also taking actions that, given the popularity of their platforms, could mitigate some of the misinformation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More attribution<\/h2>\n

OpenAI is banning apps that could discourage voting \u2014 by saying a vote was meaningless, for example. It is also directing questions about how and where to vote to CanIVote.org, operated by the National Association of Secretaries of State. The company said it is increasingly providing links and attribution to news reporting to help voters assess the reliability of the generated text.<\/p>\n

Google is requiring political ads using significant AI content to have warning labels like:\u00a0<\/p>\n