As a year of major global elections comes to a close, researchers from The Alan Turing Institute are urging policy makers, regulators, and social media platforms to put measures in place to safeguard against future AI-enabled election threats.

In a newly-published report, researchers from The Alan Turing Institute’s Centre for Emerging Technology and Security (CETaS) have advocated for a slew of measures, including a requirement for social media platforms to provide specific access to data on harmful disinformation campaigns.

The CETaS experts analysed all major elections this year and, in common with other key ballots, highlighted that the US election saw a number of examples of viral AI disinformation. These included bot farms mimicking US voters, the spread of conspiracy theories, and AI-generated content used to undermine candidates.

Although the researchers found a lack of evidence of any measurable impact on the US election result, fears remain that AI-generated threats—and the hype that surrounds them—are eroding trust and allowing harmful narratives to thrive.

In light of this, the new AI-Enabled Influence Operations: Safeguarding Future Elections report advocates for action within the following four areas:

• Curtailing generation by increasing barriers or deterring the creation of online disinformation. This includes actions such as strengthening the authenticity of credible information through automatically embedding provenance records in digital content produced by the government and other sectors.
• Constraining dissemination by reducing the effectiveness and virality of disinformation. This includes measures such as creating government co-ordinated benchmarks for deepfake detection tools, and a new Ofcom Code of Conduct on online disinformation.
• Counteracting engagement by targeting the ways people digitally consume disinformation to reduce malicious influence. This includes urging the Independent Press Standards Organisation to revise guidance on reporting major incidents to include key considerations for coverage on viral disinformation content.
• Empowering society by strengthening societal capabilities for exposing and undermining online disinformation. This includes requiring social media platforms to provide data access on identified harmful disinformation campaigns for trusted members of the UK academic, research, and civil society community.

“More than 2 billion people went to the polls this year, providing us with unprecedented evidence of the types of AI-enabled threats we face and a golden window of opportunity to protect future elections,” said Sam Stockwell, who serves as lead author and research associate at The Alan Turing Institute.

“We should be reassured that there’s a lack of evidence that AI has changed the course of an election result, but there can be no complacency. Researchers and others monitoring these issues must urgently be given better access to social media platform data, in order to effectively assess and counter the most serious malicious voter-targeting activities moving forward.”

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The new report also analyses how the public engages with misinformation and disinformation amid AI’s advancement and widespread usage.

Digital literacy and critical thinking initiatives show promise, for instance, but surveys have shown that very few people have used resources that could build their resilience against disinformation. The report authors have urged the government to introduce mandatory programmes in primary and secondary schools—along with providing materials for adults—to cover issues like deepfakes, how to verify content, and how AI algorithms work.

The Institute’s latest report is the third in a series of reports looking at AI’s impact on election security. AI-Enabled Influence Operations: Threat Analysis of the 2024 UK and European Elections, the second report, was published in September of this year.