As Spectrum News 1’s Jack Arpey has reported, New York state Democrats are urging the state Board of Elections to take legal action against Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman for his use of artificial intelligence in campaign ads.
Several of the gubernatorial candidate’s ads include AI-generated images of Gov. Kathy Hochul, whom he’s challenging in this year’s election. Those ads aren’t labeled like a new law requires.
But AI-generated images aren’t the only way artificial intelligence is influencing our elections and public opinion.
According to Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, there are now supercharged “bots” that no longer need human intervention to coordinate propaganda, and these bots are very effective at distributing misinformation.
According to a study out by the University of Southern California, these upgraded bots are capable of setting goals, building teams, writing their own posts and learning from their mistakes. Each post they generate is slightly different and therefore appears a lot more authentic to media consumers.
“What we know is that it’s actually quite easy to generate this content and distribute it through social media platforms, so it’s a great concern,” Stromer-Galley told Capital Tonight.
There is more concerning news regarding AI. According to Stromer-Galley, research indicates that the public generally does not do a good job distinguishing AI-generated content from human-generated content, which will likely pave the way for bad actors to sow dissent and disinformation in the lead-up to the midterm elections.
Additionally, she says there are currently no federal laws passed by Congress that regulate AI content in political ads or in policy conversations.
“There have been efforts by primarily the Democratic Party to advance legislation – that would restrict two dimensions: Restrict political advertisements with AI used. Other proposals would require that there be disclaimers so that people know that the ads that they’re seeing have political content,” she said. “So far, none of them have passed Congress.”