Election and state-media misinformation

Social media is enabling the spread of election disinfo & AI deepfakes. As billions of people go to the polls this year, learn how the spread of online disinfo can harm election integrity & democracy.

2 0

CCDH's new research shows that popular AI tools easily generate election disinformation. We tested Midjourney, ChatGPT Plus, DreamStudio & Microsoft’s Image Creator 160 times, using text prompts about the 2024 US presidential election. They generated election disinformation in 41% of our tests.

Watch more on @scrippsnews.

2 0

We tested popular AI image tools including Midjourney, ChatGPT Plus, DreamStudio & Microsoft’s Image Creator, and found that they generated election disinformation in 41% of tests overall.

We did 160 tests using text prompts about the 2024 US presidential election. These prompts simulated bad actors’ attempts to generate disinformation about the main candidates & the voting process.

What we found was worrying:

➡️ AI tools generated realistic images of election fraud & voter intimidation in 59% of our tests. This dangerous trend is particularly concerning as claims of fraud ran rampant in the last US election.

➡️ Midjourney performed worse than other tools, generating election disinformation in 65% of tests. We searched Midjourney’s servers & found that the tool is already being used to generate content featuring politicians, which could potentially be used to spread election disinfo.

➡️ Deepfakes are a growing problem. We found that the number of Community Notes on X referencing AI has gone up by 130% a month in 2023, which suggests that AI-generated images are becoming a serious issue on the platform.

Midjourney, ChatGPT Plus, DreamStudio & Microsoft’s Image Creator are failing to enforce existing policies against misleading content. Midjourney & ChatGPT Plus even have specific policies about election misinformation - yet, they’re letting bad actors fabricate misleading images.

🗳️ Misleading AI-generated images, videos & audios are already influencing elections worldwide. These fabricated images could support false claims about candidates & election fraud, and seriously harm democracy.

Watch our new research on @CNN.

3 0

Articles about Ukraine written by English-language media outlets owned by the Russian state have received over 500,000 likes, comments and shares from Facebook users in the last year, according to new research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH)

Facebook announced in October 2019 that it would start “labelling state-controlled media on their Page and in our Ad Library,” as part of its measures to counter disinformation targeting US elections.

But new research finds that the vast majority (91%) of posts containing content from Russian state media are not covered by this policy and do not carry labels.

5 5