UVA Center for Politics concerned over use of deepfakes in elections

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - Experts at the University of Virginia Center for Politics are bringing attention to the potential dangers of artificial intelligence and using deepfakes to swing an election.

A deepfake is a computer-created manipulation of someone’s voice or likeness using machine-learning to create content that appears real.

Deepfakes have become so real that the Federal Election Commission opened public comment last week on a proposal which would prohibit the use of them in campaign ads.

“The problem is that the 2024 election is just going to be here more quickly than Congress can legislate on this issue,” Carah Ong Whaley with Center for Politics said. “There’s a number of ways in which artificial intelligence can be used to impact elections: It could be large language models, such as Chat GPT, or Bard might be used to generate text messages or emails.”

It can also be used to imitate the voice or likeness of a politician.

“We do know that the ability to manipulate images, to manipulate audio, to manipulate video has been there before. I think what’s new now is that it’s becoming more realistic,” Whaley said. “Without any sort of rules on the road, without a framework right now, we’re really left to public literacy.”

Whaley says she is extremely concerned about the current state of our democracy, and there needs to be rules in place built around transparency and accountability when disclosing what has been created using AI so the public knows how something has been manipulated.

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