Disinformation reimagined: how AI could erode democracy in the 2024 US elections

A banal dystopia where manipulative content is so cheap to make and so easy to produce on a massive scale that it becomes ubiquitous: that's the political future digital experts are worried about in the age of generative artificial intelligence (AI). In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, social media platforms were vectors for misinformation as far-right activists, foreign influence campaigns and fake news sites worked to spread false information and sharpen divisions. Four years later, the 2020 election was overrun with conspiracy theories and baseless claims about voter fraud that were amplified to millions, fueling an anti-democratic movement to overturn the election. Now, as the 2024 presidential election comes into view, experts warn that advances in AI have the potential to take the disinformation tactics of the past and breathe new life into them. AI-generated disinformation not only threatens to deceive audiences, but also erode an already embattled information ecosystem by flooding it with inaccuracies and deceptions, experts say. "Degrees of trust will go down, the job of journalists and others who are trying to disseminate actual information will become harder," said Ben Winters, a senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy research nonprofit.