Fears grow over AI's impact on the 2024 election

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is raising concerns about how the technology could impact next year’s election as the start of 2024 primary voting nears. AI — advanced tech that can generate text, images and audio, and even build deepfake videos — could fuel misinformation in an already polarized political landscape and further erode voter confidence in the country’s election system. “2024 will be an AI election, much the way that 2016 or 2020 was a social media election,” said Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, interim dean at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. “We will all be learning as a society about the ways in which this is changing our politics.” Experts are sounding alarms that AI chatbots could generate misleading information for voters if they use it to get info on ballots, calendars or polling places — and also that AI could be used more nefariously, to create and disseminate misinformation and disinformation against certain candidates or issues. “I think it could get pretty dark,” said Lisa Bryant, chair of the Department of Political Science at California State University, Fresno and an expert with MIT’s Election lab. Polling shows the concern about AI doesn’t just come from academics: Americans appear increasingly worried about how the tech could confuse or complicate things during the already contentious 2024 cycle. A UChicago Harris/AP-NORC poll released in November found a bipartisan majority of U.S. adults are worried about the use of AI “increasing the spread of false information” in the 2024 election. A Morning Consult-Axios survey found an uptick in recent months in the share of U.S. adults who said they think AI will…Fears grow over AI's impact on the 2024 election