AI could supercharge disinformation and disrupt EU elections, experts warn
Voters in the European Union are set to elect lawmakers starting Thursday for the bloc’s parliament, in a major democratic exercise that’s also likely to be overshadowed by online disinformation
BRUSSELS — Voters in the European Union are set to elect lawmakers starting Thursday for the bloc's parliament, in a major democratic exercise that's also likely to be overshadowed by online disinformation.
Experts have warned that artificial intelligence could supercharge the spread of fake news that could disrupt the election in the EU and many other countries this year. But the stakes are especially high in Europe, which has been confronting Russian propaganda efforts as Moscow's war with Ukraine drags on.
Here's a closer look:
Some 360 million people in 27 nations — from Portugal to Finland, Ireland to Cyprus — will choose 720 European Parliament lawmakers in an election that runs Thursday to Sunday. In the months leading up to the vote, experts have observed a surge in the quantity and quality of fake news and anti-EU disinformation being peddled in member countries.
A big fear is that deceiving voters will be easier than ever, enabled by new AI tools that make it easy to create misleading or false content. Some of the malicious activity is domestic, some international. Russia is most widely blamed, and sometimes China, even though hard evidence directly attributing such attacks is difficult to pin down.
“Russian state-sponsored campaigns to flood the EU information space with deceptive content is a threat to the way we have been used to conducting our democratic debates, especially in election times,” Josep Borrell, the EU's foreign policy chief, warned on Monday.
He said Russia's «information manipulation» efforts
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