Tests find AI tools readily create election lies from the voices of well-known political leaders

By ALI SWENSON
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A new report from a digital civil rights group has found that publicly available artificial intelligence tools can be easily weaponized to churn out convincing election lies in the voices of top American and European politicians. The research published Friday from the Washington-based Center for Countering Digital Hate tested six of the most popular AI voice-cloning tools. It checked whether they would generate audio clips of five false statements about elections in the voices of eight prominent politicians. The tools generated convincing voice clones in 80% of cases. The center’s CEO, Imran Ahmed, said more safeguards and transparency are needed to protect voters from AI-generated audio disinformation in a major election year.