Blake Dowling: Election season is here — with a wave of deepfakes, misinformation

Robots with human faces working in office. Group of deepfakes on TV.

Ready or not, Fall elections are almost here.

In my opinion, the last few elections have seen more changes in technology (both in and around them) than the 20 elections before that.

Not since mailers and calls became the norm have we seen so much change.

When President Obama first ran for office, he was noted as the first President of the social media age to utilize those platforms to help him get into office. Facebook, YouTube, and others helped him engage a broader audience when seeking the White House.

When President Donald Trump first ran for office, he also had social experts in his corner — not just using them but also the data analytics they produced to engage more effectively in certain markets.

The smart use of social platforms also helped him reach Pennsylvania Avenue.

I wrote about this in 2017; besides the analogy about gummy bears (in 2017, I might have been trying too hard), I think it is a solid read.

Then came the outsiders and their use of technology to negatively impact our elections. The Russians and the Internet Research Agency were top of that list in 2016.

Looking way back, one of the original goals of the Soviet Union during the Cold War was to turn U.S. citizens against each other via ideological subversion. That effort was continued full throttle with Russia and their misinformation warfare leading up to the 2016 elections.

The agency was started by Yevgeny Prigozin.

If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he also was head of the Russian mercenary organization called the Wagner Group. Remember him? He led an armed coup against Russia not that long ago as he was displeased with the situation in the Ukraine war. Following the attempted coup, his plane crashed, and all aboard were killed in an accident.

Following that “accident,” the IRA was shut down last year, but there will be plenty of Russian and other parties (see Iran, North Korea, China) stepping up to fill the gap.

They are already at it, actually, and we will see artificial intelligence — combined with deepfake technologies — pitting us against one another, the likes of which have never been seen.

Although we are already so set in our views and divided as a nation, you could shout from the rooftop that Girl Scout Cookies are bad in certain American cities, and a riot would ensue instantly. The insta-riot would state and scream that they are indeed vile, or they are, in fact, the greatest thing ever. We tend to disagree as a nation on everything these days and I would not be shocked to see a protest about protests before we get to Christmas.

Meaning we don’t need much nudging from the Russians or anyone these days to create discourse in our nation.

The end game for the Russians is not just about discourse, they would also like to get President Joe Biden to cease supporting Ukraine as they have a war dragging on and on that is not helping things for those in power in Moscow.

NBC reports a deepfake call campaign has already happened allegedly from President Biden to some voters. This means someone (AI deepfake) who sounded like the President called a large group of voters in New Hampshire with a fake automated message. Was it the Russians?

This form of deepfake tech is called generative artificial intelligence. IBM defines generative AI as deep learning models that can generate high-quality images, text, and other content based on data the AI was provided.

In simpler verbiage, the Ferreri of Fake News 4.0 is what we are dealing with in 2024.

A lot of the nonsense the IRA was putting out in 2016 really looked fake, but the content we are going to be seeing this Fall is going to be a little trickier to spot.

When it comes to spotting deepfakes, experts suggest looking for subtle differences in the movement of people in video content (cheeks and foreheads), and if it looks off it is probably fake.

A good rule of thumb before you share something fake with the masses is to research the picture or video and see if you can corroborate what it is saying. MIT took it to the next level and built a deepfake detection website so you can be part of the solution.

Outside of our enemies we will most likely see one or both Presidential Candidates doing something cool and creative with artificial intelligence that may just impact the outcome of the election. The war rooms on both sides are in full planning mode and we won’t hear about the details of what is new in their campaign arsenal until after the election is over. As far as AI use in Florida, our legislative body is making sure AI use in ads has a very clear disclaimer.

That won’t help dealing with the bad guys, but it will level the playing field for those seeking office.

Only one thing is certain, there will be an election in a few months, and it will be a bumpy road.

This is our chance to put democracy into action and it is a privilege. Some of us take it for granted and forget that not everyone around the globe has the freedoms we enjoy.

So, we can head to the polls to vote for our candidate swearing and spitting at anyone who disagrees with our righteous opinions, or we can do it quietly and respectfully.

Regardless of how you choose to behave AI just may have helped you reach that decision point, and you probably won’t even know it.