In podcasts, news reports and in political speeches, the broadcaster, reporter or politician may share in video, sound or print, information that is blatantly false or altered.
One expert is warning voters not to believe everything they read or hear especially when it comes to the upcoming presidential election.
As Americans lean in to artificial intelligence to get information online, the technology gets a failing grade when it comes to delivering factual data on historical data and events.
Chatbots and voice assistants powered by AI were found to give misleading or false information in tests conducted earlier this year. In the test, Amazon’s Alexa struggled to correctly identify the winner of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and Google’s AI overview wrongly described Barack Obama as the first Muslim president.
All too often, it seems that election misinformation is reported as fact on social media, podcasts and TV leaving the average person and AI bots confused.
“Although we call them intelligent, AI tools don’t actually know the answers to our questions,” said Julia Feerrar, a digital literacy expert at Virginia Tech. “Chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini generate predictive text in response to our prompts, and their ability to do that is built on training data that includes a lot of biased, misleading or even incorrect information.
“We need to be mindful about what we ask of these tools and what we do with the information they share,” she said.
Feerrar said that people should pay more attention to search results to see if they were generated using an AI tool. In Google, the search results often show an AI overview. If the AI overview cites a particular source, she recommends going to that source directly for more context.
“I think we can expect to see even more questionable online content as we approach the election, whether that content is AI-generated or not,” she said.
“One of the most powerful things we can all do as digital citizens is to notice any time something online sparks a big reaction, pause and look for more information before taking action.”
Consumers should vet information they find online or through other means using AI.
Questions you can ask include: Who created this information? What stake do those creators have in getting it right? Where did it come from originally?
“Fact-checking websites like Snopes or Politifact can also be useful tools when you’re trying to assess the accuracy of a claim you saw online,” Feerrar said.
The challenges with false AI-produced content won’t go anyway anytime soon, unfortunately. Feerrar suggests that people do their due diligence when it comes to researching information so they don’t share information that is false or misleading.
“Especially with high-stakes decisions like voting, it’s important to seek out trustworthy information sources,” she said.
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Crystal Graham
