SAN FRANCISCO: Meta on Tuesday said fears that artificial intelligence would unleash a torrent of misinformation to deceive voters around the world did not come true as elections played out around the world this year.

Defences against deceptive influence campaigns at the networking giant’s platform held firm, with no evidence that such coordinated efforts got much attention online, Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg told reporters.

“I don’t think the use of generative AI was a particularly effective tool for them to evade our trip wires,” Clegg said of those behind coordinated disinformation campaigns.

“The delta between what was expected and what appeared is quite significant.” Meta says that most of the cover influence operations it has disrupted in recent years were carried out by actors from Russia, Iran and China.

Meta has no intent of lowering its guard, however, since generative AI tools are expected to become more sophisticated and more prevalent.

Clegg referred to 2024 as the biggest election year ever, with some 2 billion people estimated to have gone to the polls in scores of countries around the world.

“People were understandably concerned about the potential impact that generative AI would have on elections during the course of this year,” Clegg said during a briefing with journalists.

“There were all sorts of warnings about the potential risks of things like widespread deep fakes and AI enabled disinformation campaigns.” Preventing the malicious use of generative AI in elections became an industry-wide effort, according to Clegg.

Published in Dawn, December 4th, 2024