El Paso, Texas (KTSM) — With the Texas Primary less than a month away, this election may be different than previous ones.
That’s because experts are saying artificial intelligence and apps like ChatGPT could influence voters.
Enrico Pontelli, dean of the College of Arts and Letters at New Mexico State University, says AI could be used for good purposes. It can give voters a breakdown of each candidate instead of having to look for it yourself, he said. Pontelli adds that AI can actually help you detect fake news by fact-checking pieces of information too.
Potelli said popular apps like ChatGPT, which can be helpful in giving instant responses at your fingertips and even drafting emails in seconds, are also known for producing fake responses for people.
He adds that artificial intelligence could be used to undermine elections with biased data being fed into it.
The Brennan Center for Justice says that voters are more likely to understand a text generated by a robot than one generated by a human and Pontelli adds that AI is effective at breaking down terminologies for people in a way that people can better understand.
But this sort of technology is advancing at an even faster pace than people thought. In January, voters in New Hampshire received a fake robot call from President Joe Biden.
According to NBC, the call was generated by AI technology, and it was an “unlawful attempt” to suppress voters in the upcoming primaries.
Pontelli says this is where he draws the line, saying there needs to be specific guidelines from the government about AI-generated content.
“Unless we have that, then people are going to be questioning whether something is authentic or fake,” Pontelli said.
Potelli said AI can also influence elections at the local level.
“It would not surprise me if the local elections have not been impacted by AI,” Pontelli said. He added that if voters are formulating their opinions based on information they are consuming through social media and that content is generated by an AI source, then it is very easy to sway the opinion of people in different directions.
In the meantime, U.S senators have introduced a bipartisan legislation to provide more transparency on content generated by artificial intelligence, requiring that AI-generated content be identified.
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