Dangers of deepfakes and AI ahead of election day

ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) – As we approach Election Day, it may seem like all you see on social media are political posts. The question is: can you trust what you see?

“How important will the disinformation be in terms of changing people’s minds or informing the public,” Virginia Tech communications professor Cayce Myers told WDBJ7. “And that really undermines the democratic election process and so there is great concern about that.”

Myers explained that there has been an increase in deepfake technology involving political figures during this election cycle. A deepfake is a fake image, audio recording or video created with artificial intelligence. They are often made to look and sound like a real person. While some of the content is clearly not real, it is getting better at fooling people.

“It raises the question of the integrity of the election,” Myers said. “So we’ve seen even in other countries where deep fake technology and AI have been used to create disinformation campaigns and the question is, and this is quite an unknown answer, how does that affect the behavior of voters, how does that affect the vote of a voter? decision-making?”

We have also seen an increase in disinformation for political gain. You may see viral posts on your own timeline claiming facts about candidates that are inaccurate or only partially true.

“If I think reality is one thing and vote based on that, it creates an unfair election season and undermines elections in general. And so within the election context, people need to do their due diligence and see who these sources are,” Myers explained.

If there are questionable images online, you can use a reverse image search tool on sites like Google to check the facts. Heading into Election Day, it’s a good reminder to get your news from trusted news organizations and to know that you can’t believe everything you see on social media.