ELECTION SECURITYState Lawmakers Eye Promise, Pitfalls of AI Ahead of November Elections
This presidential election cycle is the first since generative AI — a form of artificial intelligence that can create new images, audio and video — became widely available. Artificial intelligence proved the ‘topic du jour’ at the largest annual meeting of state lawmakers this week in Kentucky.
Inside a white-walled conference room, a speaker surveyed hundreds of state lawmakers and policy influencers, asking whether artificial intelligence poses a threat to the elections in their states.
The results were unambiguous: 80% of those who answered a live poll said yes. In a follow-up question, nearly 90% said their state laws weren’t adequate to deter those threats.
It was among the many exchanges on artificial intelligence that dominated sessions at this week’s meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures, the largest annual gathering of lawmakers, in Louisville.
“It’s the topic du jour,” Kentucky state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, a Republican, told lawmakers as he kicked off one of many panels centering on AI. “There are a lot of discussions happening in all of our state legislatures across the country.”
While some experts and lawmakers celebrated the promise of AI to advance services in health care and education, others lamented its potential to disrupt the democratic process with just months to go before November’s elections. And lawmakers compared the many types of legislation they’re proposing to tackle the issue.
This presidential election cycle is the first since generative AI — a form of artificial intelligence that can create new images, audio and video — became widely available. That’s raised alarms over deepfakes, remarkably convincing but fake videos or images that can portray anyone, including candidates, in situations that didn’t occur or saying things they didn’t.
“We need to do something to make sure the voters understand what they’re doing,” said Kentucky state Sen. Amanda Mays Bledsoe.
The Republican lawmaker, who chairs a special legislative task force on AI, co-sponsored a bipartisan bill this year aimed at limiting the use of deepfakes to influence elections. The bill would have allowed candidates whose appearance, action or speech was altered through “synthetic media” in an election communication to take its sponsor to court. The state Senate unanimously approved the proposal but it stalled in the House.
While Bledsoe expects to bring the bill up again next session, she acknowledged how complex the issue is: Lawmakers are trying to balance the risks of the evolving technology against their desire to promote innovation and protect free speech.
“You don’t want to go too fast,” she said in an interview, “but you also don’t want to be too behind.”
Rhode Island state Sen. Dawn Euer, a Democrat, told Stateline she’s concerned about AI’s potential to amplify disinformation, particularly across social media.
