Image creation tools powered by artificial intelli-gence from companies including OpenAI and Microsoft can be used to produce photos that could promote election or voting-related disinformation, despite each having policies against creating misleading content, researchers said in a report on Wednesday.
The Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit that monitors online hate speech, used generative AI tools to create images of US President Joe Biden laying in a hospital bed and election workers smashing voting machines, raising worries about falsehoods ahead of the US presidential election in November.
“The potential for such AI-generated images to serve as ‘photo evidence’ could exacerbate the spread of false claims, posing a significantnt chal-lenge to preserving the integrity of elections,” CCDH researchers said in the report.
CCDH tested OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus, Micro-soft’s Image Creator, Midjourney and Stability AI’s DreamStudio, which can each generate images from text prompts.
The report follows an announcement last month that OpenAI, Microsoft and Stability AI were among a group of 20 tech companies that signed an agreement to work together to prevent deceptive AI content from interfering with elections taking place globally this year. Midjourney was not among the initial group of signatories.—AFP
