New York AG calls on large tech companies to protect voters from election misinformation
NEW YORK (WABC) -- New York Attorney General Letitia James is asking nearly a dozen large tech companies to take meaningful steps to protect voters from election-related misinformation, according to a letter obtained exclusively by ABC News.
"While misinformation has been a concern in past elections, with the rise of gen AI, barriers that prevent bad actors from creating deceptive or misleading content have weakened dramatically," said the letter, which was sent to ten social media and AI companies, including Meta, Google and OpenAI.
Deceptive and misleading content about the 2024 presidential election has been circulating online and the attorney general is particularly concerned about generative AI that's making it hard to distinguish fact from fiction.
In an altered campaign video of Vice President Kamala Harris, her original audio had been swapped out and replaced with an AI voice-clone mimicking her voice to make her say things she never said. The creator posted the video on social media platform X along with a disclaimer that it was originally released as a parody, but the video gained more attention after it was re-posted by Elon Musk.
In January, a robocall appearing to impersonate the voice of President Joe Biden has been circulating and encouraging recipients of the call to "save your vote" for the November general election, rather than participate in the New Hampshire primary, according to audio obtained by ABC News.
A recent report from AI Forensics, a European non-profit investigating the impact of AI, found that Microsoft Copilot's answers to simple election-related questions contained factual errors 30% of the time. Following these investigations as well as a request for information from the European Commission, Microsoft and Google introduced "moderation layers" to their chatbots so that they refuse to answer election-related prompts, AI Forensics told ABC News.
In February 2023, most of the technology companies mentioned James' letter signed a voluntary pact to prevent AI tools from being used to disrupt democratic elections around the world. The companies did not commit to banning or removing deepfakes. Instead they outlined methods to try to detect and label deceptive AI content when it is created or distributed on their platforms.
In her letter, James is requesting an in-person meeting with these companies to go over steps they are taking to protect voters from misinformation. The letter sought written responses to questions about policies and practices plus a meeting with corporate representatives.
The letters said nothing about failure to comply though implicit in any request from the state attorney general is the possibility of an enforcement action.
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