Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) enables users to create realistic images, videos, audio, and text quickly and cheaply. These capabilities that can be useful in many contexts. However, during elections GenAI could be misused to manipulate and deceive voters at an unprecedented magnitude and scale. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University created a new guide to educate voters about how the technology may be used by unethical parties, especially foreign adversaries, to manipulate and misinform American voters in ways they may not recognize.
The guide provides information on how voters can support the integrity of the democratic process, including pausing to examine claims they encounter on social media and investigating sources of information. And the guide also addresses potential harms of GenAI, including suppressing votes, disseminating propaganda, and sowing doubt and uncertainty around the democratic process and its integrity.
With no strong guardrails around using GenAI in political campaigns, the authors also encourage voters to contact their legislators, ask them to support stronger AI regulation, and ask questions about their candidate’s use of GenAI in their campaigns.
Work on the guide was conducted at the Responsible AI Initiative (funded by the Block Center for Technology and Society and the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and in partnership with the Center for IDeaS). The guide can be found at https://www.cmu.edu/block-center/responsible-ai/genai-voterguide/genai-voter-guide.html.
KEY QUOTES:
“The use of GenAI to fabricate compelling information poses a real threat to our democracy. Our guide serves as a warning to the public and offers concrete steps to take action. At Carnegie Mellon University, we have led the creation of AI as a powerful technology, so we take our responsibility seriously to educate the public on both the capabilities and the risks of GenAI—especially if it can impact our fundamental rights.”
- Hoda Heidari, Leader of the Responsible AI Initiative at CMU’s Block Center for Technology and Society, who co-authored the resource
“The democratic process relies on debate among the voters who may have differing viewpoints, yet are informed by facts. GenAI makes it easy to derail this process through the creation of fictions, fictitious voters, and by making it appear that a real person is saying things that they never said.”
- Kathleen M. Carley, Director of Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Informed Democracy and Social-cybersecurity (IDeaS) who co-authored the guide
“These harms can ultimately sway the results of elections, giving outsized influence to those who use GenAI to promote their agenda.”
- Alex John London, Director of Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Ethics and Policy and Chief Ethicist at the Block Center, and a faculty member in CMU’s Department of Philosophy, who co-authored the guide
