“Unwanted results in elections cannot express the people’s free will. Someone must have deceived them better than us!” That’s what liberals and social democrats from both sides of the Atlantic think.
The European Union’s upcoming 2024 election is “under a significant threat from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots and deepfake content”, warns the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA). Their annual Threat Landscape report highlights a notable increase in AI chatbots, deepfakes, and similar technologies. ENISA calls for vigilance from governments, the private sector, and the media in combating AI-generated disinformation in the lead-up to the European Parliament election. The report emphasizes the pivotal role of secure cyber infrastructures and reliable information in maintaining trust in the EU’s electoral process. It’s important to emphasize your own role.
Concerns about AI-generated disinformation are growing across Europe, with incidents of deepfakes and manipulated content appearing in recent election campaigns. ENISA’s report identifies three ways in which hackers leverage AI, including crafting convincing phishing emails, generating deepfake voices, and using AI for malicious data mining.
The report also notes an unprecedented increase in cyberattacks, encompassing distributed denial-of-service attacks and ransomware incidents. Over 2,500 cyber incidents were recorded by ENISA between July 2022 and June 2023, with public administrations and the health sector being the primary targets. The report also highlights the substantial growth of social engineering attacks, where hackers adopt fake identities to gain trust and access sensitive data.
The rise of generative AI presents challenges to preserving election integrity and addressing polarized political debates and foreign influence, affecting not only the European Union but also all countries worldwide, including the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Ukraine, which have elections scheduled within the next 16 months.
