Monday, September 9, 2024

Insights from The Associated Press

As an extension of API and AP’s webinar series to support news organizations’ evolving needs when covering local elections and democracy, The Associated Press is taking over this month’s Need to Know Special Edition to share what they take into consideration when reporting on election results, misinformation, polling and more. Want to hear more? Register for the final webinar in our series to learn about AP's vote count operation and approach to election coverage on Sept. 26.

How AP reports on elections
in the age of AI

Artificial intelligence is supercharging the threat of election disinformation worldwide, making it easy for anyone with a smartphone and a devious imagination to create fake — but convincing — content aimed at fooling voters.

With AI deepfakes, a candidate’s image can be altered, or placed into false context. Images may be used in ways that encourage voters to turn toward or away from candidates — or even to avoid the polls altogether. But perhaps the greatest threat to democracy, experts say, is that a surge of AI deepfakes could erode the public’s trust in what they see and hear.

To counter this threat, AP works to fact check and debunk misinformation at every level of its journalism — from fact checking reporting across all formats to producing separate fact check stories that aim to reach audiences where they are.

AP has also expanded explanatory reporting efforts to debunk elections misinformation and reach as many people as possible with the facts they need. This includes producing deep dives into how elections work through text stories, immersive digital storytelling, social media content and more. AP has also doubled down in its commitment to providing transparency into its own race calling operations, explaining in detail the status of key races, how AP declares winners and what goes into the race calls AP makes.

Read the AP's full localization guide on election conspiracies [password is Democracy2024]

Local reporters are also an important frontline in the fight against mis- and disinformation. Leading up to November, questions to consider include: How are elections offices in your area preparing to respond to AI-generated content that attempts to mislead voters? Are any of your local candidates using generative AI technology? Are your state lawmakers considering legislation related to AI’s influence on elections?

AI boosts threat of election disinformation

Though the impact of AI deepfakes tied to elections hasn’t been as severe as some feared, a wave of misleading AI-generated content did hit elections early this year in Europe and Asia. It served as a warning for countries with upcoming elections, including the United States.

“You don’t need to look far to see some people ... being clearly confused as to whether something is real or not,” said Henry Ajder, a leading expert in generative AI based in Cambridge, England.

The question is no longer whether AI deepfakes could affect elections, but how influential they will be, said Ajder, who runs a consulting firm called Latent Space Advisory.

As the U.S. presidential race heats up, FBI Director Christopher Wray has warned about the growing threat, saying generative AI makes it easy for “foreign adversaries to engage in malign influence.”

Tips for identifying AI-generated content

Try to find the original content creator for confirmation.
Run reverse image searches on visual content to try to identify the original version.
If the visual content claims to show a specific location, cross-reference it with authentic photos and videos of the location.
Look for visual abnormalities, but don’t assume any image that looks weird is AI generated.
Generative AI tools are improving, so don’t rely on obvious visual abnormalities.
Contact digital forensics experts who can assess content for indicators that it is fake.
Use your journalistic common sense: Look for corroborating evidence of the video, image or audio in question. Does the context make sense?

Key terms to know

The AP Stylebook offers guidance for covering AI (a subscription is required). Here are some other terms to define for your audience.

AI: A branch of computer technologies that process data and complete tasks, traditionally using predetermined rules.
Generative AI: A type of AI model that can create something new. These systems can make realistic text, images, videos or audio recordings based on an inputted prompt.
Deepfake: A convincing image, video or audio hoax created using generative AI technology, often to impersonate a person or portray an event that never happened.
Chatbot: A computerized system that simulates a conversation with a human user. Many newly popular chatbots use generative AI to generate readable text on demand and even produce novel images and video. They are based on large language models, a type of deep learning algorithm that has been trained on a large database of digital data.
Hallucination: A problem with still-evolving generative AI technology in which large language models tend to make statements that sound convincing but are false or made up.

The Associated Press helps local news organizations contextualize the election coverage through localization guides — insights from AP reporters to help situate local stories in the national context. Read the AP's full localization guide on election conspiracies here [password is Democracy2024].

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