How AI could 'supercharge' election risks across south-east Asia

Y ears ago it would have been an elaborate operation involving any army of cyber troops creating fake news websites, social media accounts and forged dossiers, all deployed to spread disinformation en masse. Now, all you need is AI. In a worrying sign of how AI could "supercharge" fake news, Anthropic recently revealed how Claude AI was used in a political influence operation in Malaysia. It created a commercial election manipulation platform, utilising a network of about 1,000 X accounts, a fake news outlet called "Malaysia Pulse" and a series of fabricated documents. The operation appeared designed to target voters in in recent state elections, pulling in census and electoral data to exploit sensitive political and social fractures, including race, religion, and royalty across all 222 Malaysian parliamentary constituencies.