With high-stakes elections in 2024, some experts worry about a well-timed piece of disinformation, potentially involving a deepfake, having a calamitous impact
Financial TimesTim Harford
Context & Ripple Effects
The concern follows years of warnings that improving tools could make fabricated audio and video useful for undermining elections, and it has moved from hypothetical risk to observed political use: AI-generated election disinformation promoted in Bangladesh was reported ahead of that country’s vote.
Election campaigns, newsrooms and voting authorities face pressure to verify consequential audio, video and images quickly, especially when material appears late enough to limit rebuttal.
Voters are exposed to a more difficult credibility test: a convincing fabricated clip can force attention onto authentication rather than the underlying campaign issue.
Second-order effects
Political-ad platforms and social networks face greater demand for provenance, labeling and rapid-response processes, while legitimate campaign media may encounter more scrutiny.
The warning strengthens the case for the disclosure rules state legislators were already pursuing for AI use in political advertising, though differing penalties and requirements can leave uneven coverage.
Third-order effects
If synthetic-media incidents continue to shape election communications, trust may shift from judging a clip on its face to relying more on verified sources, distribution controls and disclosure systems.
The policy response is likely to remain fragmented unless common standards emerge, creating different obligations across elections and platforms.
The trend:Generative AI is turning election integrity from a content-moderation problem into a broader contest over provenance, verification and public trust.
“Bloomberg ... tried to determine which technology was used to create it. Those efforts included running it through ElevenLabs own ‘speech classifier’ tool, which is supposed to show if the audio was created using artificial intelligence and ElevenLabs' technology. …
Are AI Fakes and Hallucinations any different to Eric Hebborn adding cats to increase value? Wherever there's enough money... He “was being asked to “restore” blank sheets of paper, or to “find” lost preparatory sketches by old masters.” Excellent article, well worth reading:
Fakes, forgeries and the meaning of meaning in our post-truth era - must-read piece by @TimHarford on our changing information environment - by way of art - and what it may mean for our politics & beyond, for you, me and everyone via @ft https://www.ft.com/...
“If we're shown enough faked videos of atrocities, or of political gaffes, we might start to dismiss real videos of atrocities and real videos of political gaffes, too.” https://www.ft.com/... [image]
“What is the deeper problem, people falling for malicious nonsense, or people refusing to believe in carefully reported journalism? But it's certainly possible that universal cynicism is a cure worse than the disease.” https://www.ft.com/...
Hebborn was a faker on a grand scale - but what really captured my imagination were his fake fakes: claiming to have forged a Brueghel, a Da Vinci, and nobody is entirely sure whether he did or not... (My money is against the Da Vinci - but who knows?)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Fakes, forgeries and the “meaning” of “meaning” in our post-truth era. It's only a matter of time before disinformation leads to disaster. Via @FT MY VIEW: AI is topic No. 1 at every major global gathering the past few months from @Davos to @FIIKSA...…
'With high-stakes elections taking place across the world this year, deepfake experts are concerned that it's only a matter of time before a clever, well-timed piece of disinformation has a calamitous impact.' Read @timharford's feature for @ftmag https://www.ft.com/...
‘Deepfakes, like all fakes, raise the possibility that people will mistake a lie for the truth, but they also create space for us to mistake the truth for a lie’ A deep dive into deepfakes & our post-truth hellscape, by the always excellent @TimHarford: https://www.ft.com/...