‘Not the AI election’: Why artificial intelligence did not define the 2024 campaign
Images created by Eliot Higgins with the use of artificial intelligence show a fictitious skirmish with Donald Trump and New York City police officers posted on Higgins' Twitter account, as photographed on an iPhone in Arlington, Va., Thursday, March 23, 2023. The highly detailed, sensational images, which are not real, were produced using a sophisticated and widely accessible image generator. AP Photo by J. David Ake
Poynter Institute
Days after New Hampshire voters received a robocall with an artificially generated voice that resembled President Joe Biden’s, the Federal Communications Commission banned using AI-generated voices in robocalls.
It was a flashpoint. The 2024 election would be the first to unfold amid wide public access to AI generators, which let people create images, audio and video — some for nefarious purposes.
Institutions rushed to limit AI-enabled misdeeds.
Sixteen states enacted legislation around AI’s use in elections and campaigns; many of these states required disclaimers in synthetic media published close to an election. The Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency supporting election administrators, published an “AI toolkit” with tips election officials could use to communicate about elections in an age of fabricated information. States published their own pages to help voters identify AI-generated content.
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