WASHINGTON: There are still around 101 days until the US presidential race and, as in years past, misinformation is once again a major issue. Some media reports say that this year, Artificial Intelligence chatbots are also factoring into the entire equation.
One recent case: After Joe Biden dropped out of the election race on Sunday, various types of screenshots circulating on different plate forms of social media said that 9 states, including Minnesota, had already “loaded and locked” their ballots ahead of the November elections.
However, that is not true, and the office of Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon stated that the spread of this misinformation could be traced back to Grok. While an election-heavy year will reasonably mean there’s more and more focus on misinformation right now, these high risks are insistent, Shannon Raj Singh, founder of Athena Tech and Atrocities Advisory, tells Fast Company.
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One of her concerns is the impact of lower levels of misinformation content that doesn’t reach the brink of violating various platforms’ content policies—and the impact on citizens becoming accustomed to hearing tales that are misleading and false.
Meta has made changes that Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg expresses hope will mean that Instagram and Facebook “play less of a role in this election race than they have in the past,” Bloomberg reported.
