Use of AI in electioneering and its rising concerns

John F. Kennedy famously said, "The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all." In this age, voters are expected to not just know who the candidates are but also have a critical understanding of a niche concept like artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential implications on elections.

- Krithika C. Jamkhandi & Yashowardhan Tiwari

People's trust in public institutions increases only when elections are free, fair and transparent, since this guarantees that the will of the people is fairly represented. Likewise, the integrity of the electoral process is an essential component of a resilient and functioning democracy. It is therefore vital that those in charge of conducting elections acknowledge and tackle the manipulation caused by artificial intelligence.

Though AI is considered to be a revolutionary technological progress that offers hope for solving many international problems, it is seen to be disrupting long-standing systems and causing disputes in a number of sectors. The creation of a deepfake is one of the most apparent counter-productive uses of artificial intelligence; it could deliberately show a politician making an inflammatory speech, causing a public outcry. Artificial intelligence techniques, such as Generative Adversarial Network, are used to generate or edit audio or video material; hence, the likelihood of AI being used to breach the credibility of voting systems through tampering is on the rise.

According to a Pew Research Center survey (By Shanay Gracia, survey conducted from August 26 - September 2, 2024), around 57% of Americans were found worrying about the tendency of AI to fraudulently manipulate political campaigns. The survey found that people were generally concerned that AI tools such as deepfakes could be used to persuade people into changing their voting preferences.