Two days left before the end of the pre-election campaign period and the elections to the European Parliament. The Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB) warns of the possibility that during these days video, audio or visual materials with scandalous images of persons similar to the parliamentary candidates could be spread in social media to deliberately misinform potential voters and influence their opinion. Thus, KNAB encourages people to be especially critical of the information available in the public space and check its veracity.
KNAB bases the potential risks on the experience of the USA, Poland, Slovakia and several other countries where artificial intelligence tools were used to deliberately mislead voters before elections. For example, before the Slovak parliamentary elections, an audio file was posted on Facebook with the artificially reproduced voices of a party leader and a journalist allegedly discussing ways to buy votes in the elections. In another example, on the day the current US President announced his candidacy for a second term, a video went viral, using artificial intelligence to predict how cruel the world would be if he was re-elected.
Artificial intelligence tools can create video, audio recordings and visual images of people who look like parliamentary candidates in situations that are untrue and unflattering. Given that it is difficult to identify such material as true events, KNAB urges people to be sceptical and critical of scandalous materials that might be spread in social media shortly before the elections.
If such video, audio and visual materials are rapidly spread in social media shortly before the elections, KNAB urges not to spread this information, to verify its veracity in reliable media and to wait for a comment from the possibly discredited person. In such cases, KNAB also encourages people to strengthen the knowledge of the elderly about possible deliberate voter deception by using artificial intelligence tools.