U.S. intelligence officials warned Monday that foreign actors like Russia, Iran, and China are using artificial intelligence to influence American elections. An official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Russia has been the most active in creating AI-generated content across various media, including text, images, audio, and video. The aim is to promote divisiveness and spread false information about U.S. political figures.
An ODNI official said, "Russia is a much more sophisticated actor in the influence space in general, and they have a better understanding of how U.S. elections work and where to target and what state, what states to target."
According to the official, Iran is also using AI to write fake social media posts and create fake-news websites to push its agenda. The official said, "One of the benefits of generative AI models is to overcome various language barriers, and so Iran can use the tools to help do that," in some cases even translating disinformation into Spanish in a bid to push a narrative about immigration and other key issues.
The official added, "The reason why Iran is focused on immigration is because they perceive it to be a divisive issue in the United States, and they identify themes, and this is broadly speaking, they identify themes with which they think will create further discord the United States."
China has used AI in similar ways, generating fake news anchors and social media content to push pro-China propaganda.
But while AI is making such operations faster and more convincing, U.S. intel officials say it's not advanced enough to completely fool the public.
"Foreign actors are using AI to more quickly and convincingly tailor synthetic content," the ODNI official said, adding that the intelligence community "considers AI a malign influence, accelerant, [but] not yet a revolutionary influence tool."