Hi there, it’s Rachyl Jones with the tech team. 2024 is set to be a disruptive year for both artificial intelligence and politics, as the U.S. presidential election approaches. But it’s when AI and elections overlap that things get dicey.
Cybersecurity has become a more prominent concern for election officials in the last decade, brought on in part by the 2016 DNC hack that sought to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and create a sense of mistrust around elections. And Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election further called into question the integrity of the system. Cyber attacks are sure to remain a threat this year, but the landscape has changed. For the first time, AI tools are available to the general public, making it much easier for anyone with a political agenda to spread disinformation.
“It’s a lot easier to sow discord, confusion, and chaos by using things like AI and leveraging social media than it is to figure out how to hack into a government system,” Adam Marré, chief information security officer at cybersecurity company Arctic Wolf, told Fortune.
Phishing emails, for example, become much more sophisticated with generative AI. The red flags consumers use to detect these spam messages—including spelling errors, strange formatting, and incorrect logos—can be corrected with the use of AI. And disinformation can go much further than spreading lies about a political candidate. Emails may include an incorrect voting date, a message stating a polling place has been closed, or a false confirmation a voter will receive a ballot in the mail.
“This is something election officials need to be aware of and need to come up with ways to combat,” Marré said.
Even if officials are aware of the new threat AI poses, there is a disconnect in their ability to address it. More than one-third of state and local government leaders said their budgets are either somewhat or very inadequate in addressing their cyber concerns for the upcoming election, according to a survey published by Arctic Wolf on Tuesday. The problem doesn’t just exist among small cities and counties, Marré said, but territories with larger funding amounts may still feel unprepared given the size of the system they’re protecting and the scope of the potential problem.
Election offices are traditionally understaffed and overworked, with many sharing IT staff with other departments or lacking them altogether, said Lawrence Norden, senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit policy institute. Budgets have to pay for a breadth of products, people, and services—poll workers, voting equipment, paper ballots, mail-in ballot trackers, and even physical security, as threats to election workers have increased in recent years. When it comes to robust cybersecurity measures, some offices “just don’t have the money,” Norden told Fortune.
It’s not all bad news. The government last year increased its presence of advisors across the country to help localities access federal resources, and there’s a whole branch of AI working to counter these attacks. But ultimately, experts said voters must be aware of new ways bad actors can use AI to impact the information they consume about the election.
On that note, here’s some of the biggest tech news of the day.
Rachyl Jones
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