With under six months until the U.S. general election, Virginia Senator and Intelligence Committee chair Mark R. Warner yesterday pushed tech companies to follow up on commitments made at the Munich Security Conference and take concrete measures to combat malicious misuses of generative artificial intelligence (AI) that could impact elections.
Speaking live on national television yesterday morning, Warner expressed grave concern for the ways in which this November’s election could be corrupted by AI and other means by foreign bad actors and others. He conducted a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday afternoon and slated a media availability for today.
Sen. Warner noted three ways in which this interference and corruption is occuring already, and are already impacting next month’s parliamentary elections across Europe.
First, he said, it is not only Russia but also China and Iran who are preparing or engaging in cyberattacks and widespread disinformation campaigns.
Second, he cited voter “willingness to believe crazy conspiracy theories” that need to be more aggressively dispelled.
Third, he named the potentially devastating impact of AI to engage in “deep fakes,” noting that currently there are no adequate “guard rails” in place to counter them, as the tech leaders had promised in Munich to develop.
In Munich in February, a group of AI companies signed the “Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections,” a high-level roadmap for a variety of new initiatives, investments, and interventions that could improve the information ecosystem surrounding this year’s elections. Following that initial agreement, Sen. Warner is pushing for specific answers about the actions that companies are taking to make good on the Tech Accord.
“Against the backdrop of worldwide proliferation of malign influence activity globally — with an ever-growing range of malign actors embracing social media and wider digital communications technologies to undermine trust in public institutions, markets, democratic systems, and the free press — generative AI (and related media-manipulation) tools can impact the volume, velocity, and believability of deceptive elections,” Sen. Warner wrote and reiterated yesterday.
This year, elections are taking place in over 40 countries representing over four billion people, while AI companies are simultaneously releasing a range of powerful and untested new tools that have the potential to rapidly spread believable misinformation, as well as abuse by a range of bad actors.
While the Tech Accord represented a positive, public-facing first step to recognize and address this novel challenge, Sen. Warner is pushing for effective, durable protections to ensure that malign actors can’t use AI to craft misinformation campaigns and to prevent its dissemination on social media platforms. To that end, he posed a series of questions to get specific information on the actions that companies are taking to prevent the creation and rapid spread of AI-enabled disinformation and election deception.
“While high-level, the commitments your company announced in conjunction with the Tech Accord offer a clear roadmap for a variety of new initiatives, investments, and interventions that can materially enhance the information ecosystem surrounding this year’s election contests. To that end, I am interested in learning more about the specific measures your company is taking to implement the Tech Accord. While the public pledge demonstrated your company’s willingness to constructively engage on this front, ultimately the impact of the Tech Accord will be measured in the efficacy — and durability — of the initiatives and protection measures you adopt,” Sen. Warner wrote the tech leaders.
The letter concludes by pointing out that several of the proposed measures to combat malicious misuse in elections would also help address adjacent misuses of AI technology, including the creation of non-consensual intimate imagery, child sexual abuse material, and online bullying and harassment campaigns.
Sen. Warner has been consistently calling attention to and pushing for action from AI companies on these and other potential misuses. On Wednesday, Sen. Warner will host a public Intelligence Committee hearing where leaders from the FBI, CISA, and the ODNI will provide updates on threats to the 2024 election.
Sen. Warner sent letters to every signatory of the Tech Accord: Adobe, Amazon, Anthropic, Arm, Eleven Labs, Gen, GitHub, Google, IBM, Inflection, Intuit, LG, LinkedIn, McAfee, Microsoft, Meta, NetApp, Nota, Open AI, Snap, Stability AI, TikTok, Trend, True Media, Truepic, and X.
