Artificial Intelligence and misinformation have become a major potential weapon to be used in the 2024 election.
Mass media platforms are serving as the broader method for politicians to use in reaching and communicating with their audiences. Social media allows for political candidates to broadcast their campaigns to their audiences that support them and to the audience who do not. Having the most friends and followers can be the key to winning the majority vote.
Let us gain an insight on the impact social media will have on the upcoming 2024 presidential election, an election said to be one of the most controversial election running’s due to the usage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and threats of mass misinformation.
In 2008, Barack Obama was dubbed the “first president of social media,” due to his massive friends and followers on social sites like Facebook and Twitter. In other words, Obama used social media to his advantage and in turn he succeeded in winning two elections. Realizing the power of social media, technology has advanced so much that we may not be able to determine what is real or fake.
Artificial intelligence allows for the creation of digital content that blurs the lines between users being able to determine what is real and what is fake content. This will pose a traumatic challenge in the political race. Political figures are concerned with the use of AI by their competitors in campaign strategies. These concerns have put companies like meta and Twitter on alert for deep fakes and AI content.
The companies have redeveloped their policies to detect miss information and evoke transparency around political ads. TikTok has invested $2 billion on redeveloping their policies and have said that they will not allow political ads on their social sites. Over the past five to six years Meta has invested $20 billion on their safety measures during the election. No changes are 100% guaranteed but having these concerns on the radar of these social media companies may help in diffusing AI usage during the political campaigns.
Misinformation has always been a concern during political elections and with the advancement of technology it is difficult to determine what is true or false. Many people already believe that elections cannot be trusted. Misinformation is a threat to the United States democracy.
There is not much that can be done about eliminating AI usage or the threat of misinformation, but with the support of companies like Meta who have begun labeling AI generated images that get posted to Facebook and Instagram is the start to noticing transparency around political ads.
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