US voters worry about lying politicians more than AI misinformation

WASHINGTON: As a bitterly contested US election campaign enters its final stretch, misinformation researchers have raised the alarm over threats posed by AI and foreign influence — but voters appear more concerned about falsehoods from a more familiar source: politicians.

The United States is battling a firehose of misinformation before the November 5 vote — from fake "news" sites that researchers say were created by Russian and Iranian actors, to manipulated images generated by artificial intelligence tools that have blurred the boundaries between reality and fiction.

More concerning for voters, however, is misinformation spreading the good old-fashioned way, through politicians sowing falsehoods, with researchers saying they face almost no legal consequences for distorting the truth.

"I think when we do a post-mortem on 2024 the most viral misinformation will have either emanated from politicians or will have been amplified by politicians," Joshua Tucker, co-director of the New York University Centre for Social Media and Politics, told AFP.

In a survey published last week by Axios, 51% of Americans identified politicians spreading falsehoods as their top concern regarding misinformation. 

Another 35% named "social media companies failing to stop misinformation," and "AI being used to deceive people."

About 30% expressed concern about foreign governments spreading misinformation.