How AI is influencing global elections

• AI is being integrated into political campaigns globally to automate, accelerate, and personalize voter targeting and messaging.
• Influence tactics span social media, search engine results, recommendation systems, and messaging apps like WhatsApp.
• Over 500 companies currently provide technology-driven political persuasion services, increasingly leveraging AI for automated content creation and micro-targeting.
• Digital content, including AI-generated images, voice clones, and avatars, is blurring the line between authentic and fabricated political communication.

AI-Driven Persuasion Methods

• Micro-targeting: Automatically tailoring messages to specific individuals based on their personal search data and behavioral patterns.
• Campaign Automation: Using AI to generate speeches, voter messaging, and full campaign strategies, often without sufficient human oversight.
• Digital Avatars: Creating realistic AI-generated avatars of candidates to deliver personalized messages, sometimes in the voter's native language or dialect.

Recent Election Examples

• United States: AI was used to create fake voice clones of figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Joe Biden, as well as misleading imagery of public figures like Taylor Swift.
• Pakistan: Supporters used old footage and voice-cloned audio to simulate campaign speeches for the incarcerated politician Imran Khan.
• Indonesia: Candidate Prabowo Subianto utilized a "cute" digital avatar on TikTok to rebrand his public image and win the presidency, effectively sidelining past controversies.

Verification and Resilience

• Highly emotional content (fear, anger, anxiety) is often a sign of AI-generated misinformation designed to go viral.
• If media content triggers strong emotional reactions, viewers should pause to verify its legitimacy.
• Global resources such as the International Fact-Checking Network can help identify reputable, verified sources of information.