Days before a pivotal election in Slovakia to determine who would lead the country, a damning audio recording spread online in which one of the top candidates seemingly boasted about how he’d rigged the election.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, his voice could be heard on another recording talking about raising the cost of beer.
The recordings immediately went viral on social media, and the candidate, who is pro-NATO and aligned with Western interests, was defeated in September by an opponent who supported closer ties to Moscow and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
While the number of votes swayed by the leaked audio remains uncertain, two things are now abundantly clear: The recordings were fake, created using artificial intelligence; and US officials see the episode in Europe as a frightening harbinger of the sort of interference the United States will likely experience during the 2024 presidential election.
“As a nation, we are woefully underprepared,” said V.S. Subrahmanian, a Northwestern University professor who focuses on the intersection of AI and security.
Senior national security officials in the US have been gearing up for “deepfakes” to inject confusion among voters in a way not previously seen, a senior US official familiar with the issue told CNN. That preparation has involved contingency planning for a foreign government potentially using AI to interfere in the election.