Freaking Out About AI as the World Goes to the Polls
Deepfake
Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Taylor Swift walk into a bar. The bartender asks what they’re drinking. No one replies. And why would they?
They were never there.
2024 is the biggest election year in history — one increasingly compromised by AI-engineered “news” fraud.
The Economist estimates some 76 major elections will take place this year, including parliamentary and presidential elections in the US, Russia, Indonesia, Iran and Venezuela. That’s like 4 billion people, or more than half the global population, potentially voting in 2024.
With so many significant elections — and in the wake of the Taylor Swift deepfake porn scandal — there are growing calls for better oversight of AI software and platforms that spread fake news.
But regulations take time. EU leaders have been hashing out AI legisation since 2021. In December 2023, the EU AI Act finally passed but rules aren’t expected to come into force until late 2024, with some provisions not taking effect until the summer of 2025.
As of last October, 31 countries had passed AI legislation, and legislators in 13 more countries were debating them. (Here’s a helpful AI legislation tracker.)
