With elections in America, the UK, India, and more, this is a huge year for global politics. While bots were a cause for concern as far back as the 2016 election, technology has come a long way since then. With the rise of Generative AI, the world’s elections face an existential threat from deepfakes, disinformation and misinformation. To meet this threat, Nayef Al-Rodhan argues that we cannot rewire our brains to be able to spot misinformation. Therefore, the impetus relies on regulation and societal education.

Will artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes provide a “perfect storm” for malicious actors looking to hijack forthcoming local and general elections, as the British Home Secretary James Cleverly warned recently? Sophisticated deepfakes are becoming a global problem, and an urgent one at that. As an estimated 2 billion people head to the polls this year, there has hardly been a worse time to allow harmful content to flourish online.