With only five months before voters head to the polls, the U.S. may be more vulnerable to foreign disinformation aimed at influencing voters and undermining democracy than it was before the 2020 election, the leader of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Monday.
Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, based his warning on several factors: improved disinformation tactics by Russia and China, the rise of domestic candidates and groups who are themselves willing to spread disinformation, and the arrival of artificial intelligence programs that allow the rapid creation of images, audio and video difficult to tell from the real thing.
In addition, tech companies have rolled back their efforts to protect users from misinformation even as the government’s own attempts to combat the problem have become mired in debates about surveillance and censorship….
Several new challenges, however, will make safeguarding the 2024 election different than past cycles.
AI programs have already been used to generate misleading content, such as a robocall that mimicked the voice of Biden telling New Hampshire voters not to cast a ballot in that state’s primary. Deceptive deepfakes created with AI programs have also popped up ahead of elections in India, Mexico, Moldova, Slovakia and Bangladesh.
Attempts by federal agencies to communicate with tech companies about disinformation campaigns have been complicated by court cases and debates over the role of government in monitoring political discourse.
Tech platforms have largely moved away from aggressive policies prohibiting election misinformation. X, formerly Twitter, laid off most of its content moderators in favor of a hands-off approach that now allows Neo-Nazi hate speech, Russian propaganda and disinformation.