AI chatbots not ready for election prime time, study shows

With so many elections around the world in 2024, the stakes have never been higher. While disinformation has been a challenge for voters and candidates for years, it has been turbocharged by the rise of generative AI tools that can create convincing fake images, text and audio. — Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP

In a year when more than 50 countries are holding national elections, a new study shows the risks posed by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots in disseminating false, misleading or harmful information to voters.

The AI Democracy Projects, which brought together more than 40 experts, including US state and local election officials, journalists – including one from Bloomberg News – and AI experts, built a software portal to query the five major AI large language models: Open AI’s GPT-4, Alphabet Inc.’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, Meta Platforms Inc.’s Llama 2 and Mistral AI’s Mixtral. It developed questions that voters might ask around election-related topics and rated 130 responses for bias, inaccuracy, incompleteness and harm.