The threat of misinformation during elections is being amplified globally by artificial intelligence, which makes it simple for anybody with a smartphone and a cunning imagination to produce false but convincing content meant to trick voters.

It's a huge improvement over only a few years ago, when it took teams of people, money, and technological know-how to create fake images, movies, or audio snippets. Thanks to the availability of free and inexpensive generative artificial intelligence services like Google and OpenAI, anybody may now produce excellent "deepfakes" with just a text command.

More than 50 nations that will be voting this year should be aware of the threat posed by a wave of AI deepfakes linked to elections in Europe and Asia that has been circulating on social media for months.

"It's not hard to find individuals who are obviously perplexed about the veracity of certain things," stated Henry Ajder, a renowned generative AI specialist residing in Cambridge, England. According to Ajder, who owns a consulting company named Latent Space Advisory, the question is no longer if AI deepfakes may influence elections, but rather how significant they will be. FBI Director Christopher Wray recently issued a warning about the rising threat as the campaign for president of the United States intensifies, stating that generative AI makes it simple for "foreign adversaries to engage in malign influence."

AI deepfakes have the ability to soften or distort a candidate's picture. Candidates can be influenced to vote in one way or another, or even to stay away from the polls entirely. Experts suggest that the public's confidence in what they see and hear might be undermined by an increase in AI deepfakes, which could pose the biggest danger to democracy.