The Year of the AI Election Wasn't Quite What Everyone Expected

In the spring, the US saw what was likely its first AI candidate. In a brief campaign for the mayor of Wyoming, virtual integrated citizen (VIC), a ChatGPT-based bot created by real human Victor Miller, promised to govern entirely by AI. At the outset of 2024, many suggested that even if not winning office, generative AI would play a pivotal role in--and pose significant risks to--democratic elections, as more than 2 billion people voted in more than 60 countries. But now, experts and analysts have changed their tune, saying that generative AI likely had little to no effect at all. So were all those prognostications that 2024 would be the AI election year wrong?