AI’s capacity to damage democracy, elections may be hard to detect

This year promises to be a whopper for elective government, with billions of people — or more than 40 per cent of the world’s population — able to vote in an election. But nearly five months into 2024, some government officials are quietly wondering why the looming risk of AI hasn’t, apparently, played out.

Even as voters in Indonesia and Pakistan have gone to the polls, they are seeing little evidence of viral deepfakes skewing an electoral outcome, according to a recent article in Politico, which cited “national security officials, tech company executives and outside watchdog groups.” AI, they said, wasn’t having the “mass impact” that they expected.