Alan Turing Institute urges action after widespread election disinformation campaigns

The Alan Turing Institute has called for action from social media platforms after its research found that all major political elections this year saw a number of examples of viral disinformation.

The institute for data science and AI found that AI-generated content sought to undermine candidates, while AI bot farms attempted to mimic US voters and spread conspiracy theories.
However, researchers from Alan Turing Institute’s Centre for Emerging Technology and Security (CETaS) found a lack of evidence showing any measurable impact on the US election result.

But CETaS said that fears remain around AI-generated threats, warning that they are eroding trust in the information environment by allowing harmful narratives to thrive.

It called for measures including a requirement for social media platforms to provide specific access to data on harmful disinformation campaigns.

The Centre also suggested a package of actions to both deter the creation and sharing of disinformation and help authorities and the public reduce its impact.

The Institute’s report found that while digital literacy and critical thinking initiatives “show promise”, few people have used these resources to build their resilience against disinformation.

The report urged the UK government to introduce mandatory programmes in primary and secondary schools, along with providing materials for adults, to cover issues like deepfakes, how to verify content, and how AI algorithms work.

Additionally, CETaS called on the government to review defamation, privacy and electoral laws.
It also recommended analysing the gaps in the powers of both the Electoral Commission and Ofcom.

“More than two billion people went to the polls this year, providing us with unprecedented evidence of the types of AI-enabled threats we face and a golden window of opportunity to protect future elections,” said Sam Stockwell, lead author and research associate at the Alan Turing Institute. “We should be reassured that there’s a lack of evidence that AI has changed the course of an election result, but there can be no complacency.

“Researchers and others monitoring these issues must urgently be given better access to social media platform data, in order to effectively assess and counter the most serious malicious voter-targeting activities moving forward.”