AI hasn’t swayed voters much—with one notable exception

In fact, AI’s biggest impact this year may have simply been convincing Taylor Swift to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

In an Instagram post announcing her endorsement of Harris on Tuesday, the megastar said her endorsement was influenced in part by an AI image of her that Trump posted showing the pop megastar in a ridiculous oversized American flag hat with the phrase “Taylor Wants You To Vote”. For Donald Trump.”

“It really brought to mind the fears of AI and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” Swift wrote in her post. “I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my real plans for this election as a voter. The easiest way to combat disinformation is with the truth.”

And Swift, who cares about AI, is in good company – experts and the media have sounded the alarm that AI could fuel a “tech-based Armageddon”, that we’ve only seen the “tip of the iceberg” and that “deepfakes threaten to overturn global elections”.

But while there have been some attempts to use artificial intelligence to sway voters — like Joe Biden’s fake robocall in New Hampshire or a fake Kamala Harris campaign video — they don’t seem to be fooling anyone.

Many AI creations have come in the form of fairly obvious memes and satirical videos shared on social media, and fact-checkers — including those on the platform like X’s Community Notes — have been quick to shoot down any AI content that is convincing distance.

Even the more sinister attempts, where foreign actors use artificial intelligence to spread disinformation, can be a little over the top.

Meta, for example, wrote in its latest Adversary Threat Report that while Russian, Chinese and Iranian disinformation campaigns have used AI, “GenAI-based tactics” have provided “only incremental gains in productivity and content generation “.

And Microsoft, in its latest Threat Intelligence report from August, threw water on the idea that AI has made foreign influence campaigns more effective.

Microsoft writes that in identifying the Russian and Chinese influence operations, it found that both “used generative AI, but with limited or no impact,” adding that another Russian operation, which it first reported in April, it “repeatedly used generative AI in low-impact campaigns.”

“Overall,” Microsoft continues in its report, “we’ve seen nearly all actors try to incorporate AI content into their operations, but more recently, many actors have returned to techniques that have proven effective in the past— simple digital manipulations, mischaracterization of content and use of trusted labels or logos on top of false information.”

And it’s not just the US; recent elections around the world have not been substantially affected by AI.

The Australian Institute for Strategic Policy, which looked into cases of AI-generated disinformation around the UK’s July election, found in a recent report that voters never faced the dreaded “tsunami of AI hoaxes that it targets political candidates”.

“The UK saw only a few examples of such content going viral during the campaign,” explained ASPI researcher Sam Stockwell.

But, he added that, “While there is no evidence that these examples influenced a large number of votes”, there were “increases in online harassment against the victims of fakes” as well as “confusion among the public about the authenticity of the content . “

In a study published in May, Britain’s Alan Turing Institute found that of 112 national elections taking place or to be held since the beginning of 2023, only 19 of them showed interference by AI.

“Existing examples of AI misuse in elections are rare and often amplified by the mainstream media,” the paper’s authors wrote. “This risks amplifying public anxieties and inflating the perceived threat of artificial intelligence to electoral processes.”

But while the researchers found that “the current impact of artificial intelligence on specific election outcomes is limited,” the threats are not “It shows signs of deterioration in the wider democratic system.”