A danger to democracy? A photo of Donald Trump in the hands of the police; a video showing a bleak future if President Joe Biden is re-elected; the recording of an argument between these two. What do these social media posts have in common? They are completely false.

All creations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, this rapidly developing technology that is becoming more and more accessible to the general public. The road to the 2024 presidential election is paved with misinformation and deep fakes.

Experts fear that such AI tools will be used for one deluge of false information in the 2024 US presidential election, undoubtedly the first in which Artificial Intelligence will be widely used.

Democrats and Republicans alike will succumb to the temptation and use AI tools—cheap, accessible, with almost no legal framework around them—to mislead voters or make one-click flyers.

But experts fear AI tools could also be used to wreak havoc in an already divided country, where some voters still believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen by former President Trump, despite no evidence of this.

In March, fake images created by AI tools showing the tycoon ex-president being arrested by police went viral, giving a glimpse of what the 2024 election campaign might look like.

Last month, in response to Biden’s announcement that he would seek re-election again, the Republican Party released a video produced by TN predicting a nightmare future if the Democratic president is re-elected.

Realistic, if fake, images show China invading Taiwan and financial markets collapsing, among other things.

Earlier this year, a recorded conversation in which Trump and Biden insult each other made the rounds on TikTok. It was certainly fake too, a “product” of Artificial Intelligence tools.
For Joe Rospars, founder of Blue State, miscreants have, with this technology, “new tools to fuel hate” and “fool the press and the public.”

Dealing with them “will require vigilance from the media, technology companies and the voters themselves,” he told AFP.

“Lies”

Regardless of the intentions of the person using it, the effectiveness of AI is undeniable.

When Agence France-Presse asked ChatGPT to create a pro-Trump political newsletter, feeding it false information he was promoting, the chatbot produced an “anthem” text within seconds – and full of lies. And when the bot was asked to make the text “more aggressive,” it regurgitated the same false claims in an even more destructive tone.

“Right now, AI is telling a bunch of lies,” said Dan Woods, a former official on Biden’s 2020 campaign team.

“If our foreign adversaries simply have to get an already delusional bot to spread disinformation, then we should prepare for a much more intense disinformation campaign than in 2016,” Woods says.

At the same time, this technology can also help better understand voters, particularly those who don’t vote or vote infrequently, says Vance Revie, head of Junction AI.

AI allows “to understand precisely what they care about and why, and from there we can determine how to engage them and what policies they will care about,” he says.
It could also save campaign teams time when they have to write speeches, tweets or questionnaires for voters.

Trump

“reality deniers”

But “much of the content that’s created is going to be fake,” Revie notes.

This situation is not helped by many Americans’ distrust of the mainstream media.

“The fear is that the easier it becomes to manipulate the media, the easier it will be to deny reality,” said Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
“If, for example, a candidate says something inappropriate or illegal, they can simply say that the recording is false. This is very dangerous.”

Despite fears, the technology is already up and running. Betsy Hoover of Higher Ground Labs told AFP that her company is developing a program to write and evaluate the effectiveness of fundraising emails using artificial intelligence.

“Those with bad intentions will use any tool at their disposal to achieve their goal, and AI is no exception,” said the former Barack Obama campaign official in 2012.

“But I don’t believe that fear should stop us from exploiting Artificial Intelligence,” he adds.