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It happened greatest year for elections in human history. the year 2024super cycleyear, when 3.7 billion citizens with the right to vote in 72 countries got the opportunity to vote. These are too AI first choiceswhere many feared that deep lies and AI-generated disinformation would overwhelm democratic processes.As 2024 draws to a close, it is instructive to assess how democracy is doing.
Nearly eight times as many respondents to a Pew poll of Americans earlier this fall AI was expected to be used mostly for bad purposes In the 2024 election, as those who thought it would be used mostly for good, there are real concerns and risks involved in the use of artificial intelligence in electoral politics, but it certainly hasn’t been all bad.
Terrible “death of truth“, at least not because of AI. And candidates are eagerly embracing AI in many places where it can be used responsibly. But because it’s all happening inside the campaign and mostly secret, the public often doesn’t see all the details.
Connecting with voters
One of the most impressive and profitable applications of AI is language translation, and the campaigns have begun using it extensively. Local self-government bodies Japan and: California and prominent politicians including the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and the mayor of New York Eric Adamsused artificial intelligence to translate meetings and speeches with their various constituencies.
Even when politicians don’t speak through AI themselves, their constituents can use it to listen in. Google has launched free translation services for an extra fee 110 languages this summer, accessible to billions of people in real time through their smartphones.
Other candidates used AI’s conversational capabilities to connect with voters.US politicians Say Hutchinson, Dean Phillips and: Francis Suarez have deployed their chatbots in their presidential primary campaigns Jason Palmer Joe Biden won the American Samoa primary, at least in part thanks to an AI-generated email. Through the use of letters, texts, audio and videotapes, former Prime Minister of Pakistan. Imran Khanused an artificial intelligence clone of his voice to give speeches from prison.
Perhaps the most effective use of this technology has been in Japan, where the obscure and independent candidate for governor of Tokyo; Takahiro Annoused an AI avatar to answer 8600 questions of voters and managed to come fifth in a highly competitive field of 56 candidates.
Nuts and bolts
AIs have also been used in political fundraising.Companies love it Quiller and: Tech for Campaigns: market AIs to help craft fundraising letters Other AI systems help candidates target specific donors with personalized messages. It’s notoriously difficult to measure the impact of these types of tools, and political consultants are skeptical about what actually works, but there’s clearly interest in continuing to use these technologies in campaign fundraising.
Polls have been highly mathematical for decades, and pollsters are constantly incorporating new technologies into their processes. Techniques range from using artificial intelligence to distill voter sentiment from social networking platforms, known as “social listening“- create synthetic selectors which can answer tens of thousands of questions. Whether these AI applications will lead to more accurate survey and campaign strategic insights remains to be seen, but there is promising research driven by the ever-increasing challenge of reaching real people through surveys.
On the political organizing side, AI assistants are being used for a variety of purposes such as: helps develop political messages and strategy, ad creation, making speeches and help coordinate illustration and get-out-the-vote efforts for both the main presidential candidates in Argentina in 2023 used AI develop promotional posters, videos and other materials.
In 2024, similar opportunities have almost certainly been used in various elections around the world.For example, a Georgian politician used AI to produce blog posts, campaign images, and podcasts. Even standard productivity software packages like Adobe, Microsoft, and Google are now integrating AI features that are inevitable and likely to be very useful for campaigns. for: Other AI systems help advise candidates seeks to run for higher office.
Forgeries and fakes
And there was AI-generated disinformation and propaganda, though it was not as catastrophic as feared. Days before the Slovak elections in 2023. fake audio The discussion of election manipulation went viral. This sort of thing happened many times in 2024, but it’s unclear if any of them had any real impact.
There was a lot of press in the US presidential elections Joe Biden’s fake vote Voters in New Hampshire were told not to vote in the Democratic primary, but it didn’t appear to make much of a difference had no effect, and neither did the flow. AI-faked celebrity endorsements or viral deep fake images and videos Misrepresenting the actions of the candidates and seemingly designed to prey on their political weaknesses.
AI has also played a role in protecting the information ecosystem. OpenAI has used its own AI models disrupt Iran’s foreign influence operation aimed at sowing division before the US presidential elections. While today anyone can use AI tools to create convincingly fake audio, images and text, and that capability remains, technology platforms are also using AI automatically. moderate content like hate speech and extremism. This is a positive use case that makes content moderation more effective and saves people from reviewing the worst crimes, but there is room for it to become more efficient, more transparent, and fairer.
AI models can be much more scalable and adaptable to more languages and countries than human moderator organizations, but implementations to date on platforms like Meta show that much more work needs to be done to make these systems fair and efficient.
One thing that didn’t matter much in 2024 was the ban on corporate AI developers using their tools for politics, despite the emphasis on market leader OpenAI prohibition of political use and its use in AI automation reject the quarter million request the company’s enforcement of generating images of political candidates has been ineffective and actual use is widespread.
Gin is free
All of these trends, both good and bad, are likely to continue. As AI becomes more powerful and capable, it is likely to permeate all aspects of politics. This will happen whether the AI’s performance is superhuman or suboptimal, whether it makes mistakes or not, and whether the balance of its use is positive or negative. All it takes is one party, one campaign, one outside group or even an individual to see an advantage in automation.
Bruce SchneierAdjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School and: Nathan Sandersbranch, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University
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