As voters increasingly depend on social media and the public continues to get familiar with generative AI platforms, democracy relies on voters to sufficiently research the political claims they find online — leaving it with an unsteady fate.
Generative AI’s most recent havoc on Canadian politics occurred after one of Pierre Poilievre’s rallies in July, when numerous posts popped up on X describing first-hand accounts of the rally.
Upon further investigation, the posts were revealed to be written by bots coming from outside of Canada.
The event propelled research into the abilities of free, public-use generative AI chatbots to spread political misinformation.
According to a CBC News report, researchers at both Concordia University and the University of Ottawa found that many public-use generative AI systems would produce false accounts of political rallies held by a number of Canadian politicians if asked.
University of Ottawa professor Elizabeth Dubois told CBC News that many generative AI chatbots’ skill in creating political misinformation signals “a gap in our regulatory system.”
There have been many occurrences of AI being used to deceive voters online, most notably the rise in “deepfakes,” where artificial intelligence is used to mimic an individual’s face and voice and construct a realistic looking and sounding version of them saying virtually anything. There are countless deepfakes of Canadian politicians for both humorous and serious purposes.
Regardless of the intent, all falsified political information is deceiving to voters who are not aware of how easily misinformation can spread online.
The case of AI-generated textposts is particularly troubling, as posts on social media claiming to be audience members at a political rally seem far more subjective and difficult to prove as inherent efforts to spread misinformation.
While AI-generated images are usually much easier to identify because they often have many inaccuracies and do not look fully realistic, AI-generated writing can be tweaked using specific prompts to outline what kind of tone, vocabulary and opinion the output should possess.
The accessibility of unrestricted generative AI systems to the public will only continue to threaten and undermine Canadian democracy.
Assuming all voters will conduct detailed research on every political comment they read online is unrealistic. It is especially difficult to fact-check something subjective like an individual’s experience at a rally.
Although CBC’s reports outline that the AI-generated posts were not a sophisticated attack on Canadian democracy, the fact that the attack was easy enough to be conducted by those who experts deem as “amateurs” is concerning.
Without proper regulations, AI chatbots give the public free reign to quickly produce realistic pieces of political misinformation, making it easier to manipulate the many voters who are unaware of the truth — or lack thereof — in the political information they find online.
It is necessary that in the year leading up to the federal election, voters must search extra hard for the truth amidst the ease with which political misinformation can be spread online with AI and in general.