New York AG Letitia James warns tech giants against allowing election-related misinformation - ABC News
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
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.
The letter said the generative AI tools the recipients have built have "become increasingly popular and easy to use and misuse."
Deceptive and misleading content about the 2024 presidential election has been circulating online, and generative AI has been making it increasingly difficult for users to distinguish fact from fiction.
In an altered campaign video of Vice President Kamala Harris last month, her original audio was 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 the social media platform X, along with a disclaimer saying it was a parody -- but the video then garnered massive attention after it was reposted by X owner Elon Musk, who did not explicitly say it was satire.
In January, a robocall appearing to impersonate the voice of President Joe Biden encouraged 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.
James isn't the only politician raising the alarm about election-related AI.
Last month, the secretaries of state from Minnesota, Michigan, New Mexico, Washington and Pennsylvania sent a public letter to Musk calling for X's AI search assistant, "Grok," to direct voters seeking election information to the nonpartisan CanIVote.org, as the administrators of ChatGPT and OpenAI already do.
Letitia James, New York's attorney general, speaks during a news conference in New York, Feb. 16, 2024.Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
"As tens of millions of voters in the U.S. seek basic information about voting in this major election year, X has the responsibility to ensure all voters using your platform have access to guidance that reflects true and accurate information about their constitutional right to vote," read the letter.
A recent study by AI Forensics, a European nonprofit investigating the impact of AI, found that Microsoft Copilot's answers to simple election-related questions contained factual errors 30% of the time. Following that investigation, 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 James addressed in this week's 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 review steps they are taking to protect voters from misinformation. The letter seeks written responses to questions about policies and practices, plus a meeting with corporate representatives.
The letter said nothing about the companies' obligation to comply, though implicit in any request from the state attorney general is the possibility of an enforcement action.
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There are some people who think she is legitimate.
I wonder what the big fat Trump hating POS thinks is "disinformation?"
Seems like she is concerned about bad actors playing around with AI to generate false stories, which is not a crime until they put it in circulation without letting people know that it is indeed fake. Then it is fraud and libel and/or slander
Don't you like Fat Bottomed Girls?
Is that what it is? She thinks the type of people who work in technology might have a bias?
Maybe she stumbled on to something.
Don't you like Fat Bottomed Girls?
That isn't Kamala.
Spin baby spin.
Every human has bias to one level or another. I have found that people who work in technological fields are no more prone to display bias than any other group so broadly defined. To allude to tech workers as having a bias in any one direction based on the evidence presented is silly.
We know that she is legitimate.
Why would you claim that she hates the big fat trump?
Anything that doesn't conform to the far-left agenda and ideology?
TIM WALZ: “There’s no guarantee to free speech” if the government decides it is misinformation.
A fine example of how slimy partisan politics can get. The GOP sites are going nuts with a cherrypicked quote that discards the specific context in which it was applied: voter intimidation and information about when and where to vote .
Instead of being honest, they portray this as Walz being an opponent to the constitutional right of free speech.
Everyone should know that the right of free speech without consequences is incorrect. The classic caveat of not yelling "fire" in a movie theater is such an example. Do you think it is okay to have agents (AI or human) pretending to be authorities and spreading damaging information — especially that which interferes with an election? Would you be okay, for example, if a deep fake video of Trump went viral where Trump claimed † that once in power he will be president for life?
Would you be okay with producing a mailer targeted at GOP members giving them bogus instructions on when and where to vote?
† As an aside, it is difficult to come up with an example of outrageous behavior for Trump that he has not already engaged in.
I'm with you on the AI, but it is a slippery slope, especially in the hands of ideologues who run for the important position of DA by promising to get somebody.
The former DA was the one who told Bragg he wasn't going after the former 'president' convicted felon and rapist fast enough. Odd you would make the claim that it was on Bragg 'to get the former 'president convicted felon and rapist'.
But (by omission) you are NOT with me on the slimy cherry-picking of Walz' remarks to make it seem as though he was against the 1st amendment instead of the specific context where he was stating that it is wrong to use free speech to interfere with an election?
A very fine example of misinformation.