Commentary
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more common, including in politics. Images of Donald Trump getting violently arrested in New York or of the Pope wearing a puffy white coat are deepfakes that many believed, or wanted to believe, when they went viral.
On June 26, former Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt warned of AI’s capability to spread misinformation, telling a CNBC audience that “the 2024 elections are going to be a mess because social media is not protecting us from false generative AI.”
Schmidt noted that social media companies like Alphabet, Twitter, and Meta cut thousands of jobs devoted to content moderation. Those roles might have helped ferret out AI deepfakes in the 2024 elections….