Democratic tech leaders like Zinc Labs executive director Matt Hodges told me that running a training campaign on these tools now could prevent headaches down the road.
“We don’t want to start that process six months from now. Starting today is how we get ahead of it,” said Hodges, who is also a former engineering director for Biden 2020. Zink Labs also provides AI training for campaigns.
Earlier this year, major tech companies including Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft signed a pact agreeing to take “reasonable precautions” to prevent their AI-generated tools from wreaking havoc in elections around the world. The pact requires the companies to detect and label false content created by AI.
Microsoft and Google are also incorporating labeling and watermarking programs into campaign workshops. Microsoft is giving campaigners a crash course on its “content authentication,” or watermarking, technology and showing them how to apply it to campaign materials to ensure their authenticity. Similarly, Google is explaining its own program, SynthID, which labels images created with its AI tools.
Big Tech companies believe that this type of content verification regime can reduce the risk that deepfakes, cheapfakes, and other AI-altered content could disrupt US elections.
But despite the signing of technology agreements and other voluntary measures, none of these authentication methods are perfect, as WIRED’s Kate Knibbs previously reported.
And this is a bit more complicated than just pushing Microsoft and Google for content certification. The companies’ AI chatbots, Copilot and Gemini, also haven’t proven themselves able to answer simple questions about electoral history; as my colleague David Gilbert reported last week, both chatbots refused to answer when asked who won the 2020 presidential election. These could be models to provide policy guidance to political campaigns, as well as to support AI bots that answer voter questions or run for office themselves.
With six months until Election Day, the big tech companies are offering campaigns both the poison and the antidote to AI-generated content, and even if their authentication programs could identify 100% of AI-generated content, government intervention would be needed to standardize the technology across the board.
So for now, and likely for the rest of the year, it will be up to the AI industry to avoid making disastrous mistakes when it comes to creating or detecting harmful content.
Chat Rooms
Ever since reading Annie Jacobsen’s astonishing “Nuclear War: A Scenarios,” I’ve become a bit obsessed with reading about the end of the world. Wonderful singing voice★~(◠‿◕✿)
So this week, I want you to send a bunch of your worst fears about AI and all the elections taking place this year to my inbox. I want them to be scary, but realistic.
We’d love to hear your thoughts, so leave a comment on the site or send us an email at mail@wired.com.
💬 Please leave a comment below this article.
WIRED Reading
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What else am I reading?
🔗 How Americans view politics on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram: Despite the leadership changes, X (formerly Twitter) remains the top platform for users seeking political news, and polls show that Republicans are also fairly satisfied with the Elon Musk-controlled platform (Pew Research).
🔗 Surgeon General: Why social media platforms need warning labels: In an op-ed for The New York Times, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy explained why he thinks the government should impose warning labels on social media platforms. Murthy’s call: Murthy v. Missouri That is expected to decline this summer. (The New York Times)
🔗 Facts in focus: Biden’s silence leaving star-studded Los Angeles fundraiser makes him a target for opponents: The Biden campaign is facing its first major cheap fakery scandal of the election cycle, as footage from a series of high-profile events, including the recent G7 summit, has been cleverly edited to exaggerate the impact of Biden’s age and spread across platforms like X. (Associated Press)
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This week in WIRED Political Lab In the podcast, host Leah Fager talks with my colleague, Senior Reporter David Gilbert, about our recent reporting on a nationwide militia group organized by individuals jailed for the January 6th riot. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
See you next week! Email, Instagram, X And Signal by makenakelly.32.
