Big tech companies band together to prevent AI 2024 election interferance

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - New Hampshire voters received a phone call ahead of the primary, seeming like President Joe Biden telling them not to vote.

But it wasn’t Joe Biden. It was an AI creation from the campaign of Biden’s Democratic opponent Dean Phillips.

“You can imagine the impact that could have if that was used in a video, or in an audio file during a crucial moment in an election,” said Microsoft Democracy Forward Director Ginny Badanes. “That’s really scary, and something that people need to be looking out for.”

Microsoft is one of about 20 companies, including Google, Meta and Amazon that met in Munich to work toward preventing these kinds of deep fakes.

“One thing that the technology companies agreed to do in the accord, was whenever their products are used to create AI images, videos or audio files, that they will do something to mark that file, meaning they’ll use watermarking or finger printing,” Badanes said.

Cybersecurity experts fear countries will use the new technology to influence other nations elections.

“Even if we decide that we aren’t going to pursue some kind of technology because it’s too dangerous, that doesn’t mean that China won’t or that North Korea won’t,” Interhack Corporation founder Matthew Curtin said.

Virginia Senator Mark Warner, D-VA, attended Munich conference, and thinks the initial work from the tech giants is positive.

“Russia is more interested than ever in interfering in our elections.”

Warner said the U.S. needs to pay more attention to foreign powers using A-I to mislead American voters.

“I think we’ve kind of gone a little bit asleep at the switch. It’s not as high of a concern, and part of our job is to educate members of Congress and the American public.”

Microsoft said tech companies are still in the early stages of fighting back against AI misinformation.

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