The public discussion of disinformation often focuses on targeted candidates, without recognizing that disinformation actually targets voters. In the case of elections, actors both foreign and domestic are trying to influence whether or not you - as an individual - vote, and for whom to cast your ballot. The effort goes farther than elections: it is about the information on whether to vaccinate children or boycott the NFL. What started with foreign adversaries now includes domestic groups, all fighting for control over what you believe to be true.

 

False news stories and so-called deepfakes are increasingly sophisticated and making it more difficult for data-driven software to spot. ​Where things get especially scary is the prospect of malicious actors combining different forms of fake content into a seamless platform, producers of fake news content can already produce convincing fake videos, generate persuasively realistic text, and deploy chatbots to interact with people. Imagine the potential persuasive impact on vulnerable people that integrating these technologies could have: an interactive deepfake of an influential person engaged in AI-directed propaganda on a bot-to-person basis.

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The risk factor is social media continues being abused and used to influence elections in the United States. The Pentagon along with some private social media platforms are trying to create detection systems to identify and fight coordinated disinformation campaigns and create technologies to detect malicious intent and prevent viral fake news from polarizing society, but these efforts won’t be anywhere near perfect until there is aggressive legislative leadership and oversight.

 

We are asking Congress to take the lead.