AFP :
As a bitterly contested US election campaign enters its final stretch, misinformation researchers have raised the alarm over threats posed by AI and foreign influence — but voters appear more concerned about falsehoods from a more familiar source: politicians.
The United States is battling a firehose of misinformation before the November 5 vote — from fake “news” sites that researchers say were created by Russian and Iranian actors, to manipulated images generated by artificial intelligence tools that have blurred the boundaries between reality and fiction.
More concerning for voters, however, is misinformation spreading the good old-fashioned way, through politicians sowing falsehoods, with researchers saying they face almost no legal consequences for distorting the truth.
“I think when we do a post-mortem on 2024 the most viral misinformation will have either emanated from politicians or will have been amplified by politicians,” Joshua Tucker, co-director of the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics, told AFP.
In a survey published last week by Axios, 51% of Americans identified politicians spreading falsehoods as their top concern regarding misinformation.
At least 35% named “social media companies failing to stop misinformation,” and “AI being used to deceive people.” About 30% expressed concern about foreign governments spreading misinformation. “It’s like, ‘The call is coming from inside the house,'” said John Gerzema, head of the pollster that conducted the survey, repeating a popular reference from a classic horror movie.
“In past elections, there was always fear of misinformation and election interference coming from abroad. But here we see the most likely source of concern is America’s own politicians spreading misinformation.”
A flood of photorealistic AI-generated fake images on social media has unleashed what researchers call the “deep doubt” era — a new age of skepticism that has diminished online trust.