Elections are particularly vulnerable to AI-driven disinformation. A lot of focus is on deep fakes but that’s not what’s up.<p>AI tools are probably going to come into focus as they target and amplify the power of large-scale disinformation campaigns using mass personalization techniques.<p>The ability to generate digital output that blends agenda-driven falsehoods or what appear to be mere harmless talking points <i>(rule 1 of mass communication being that you cannot control that people talk merely influence what they discuss)</i> with voters’ information environments completely transparently and even appearing to be from a voter’s friends, family or community is truly concerning.<p>This, combined with deep targeting of exploiting voters racial, religious, and political identities en masse is <i>absolutely</i> underestimated.<p>The constant compromise of large-scale credit, banking and government systems has also allowed adversaries to build a comprehensive database on virtually every western citizen, including their views, background and socioeconomic data among other things, which will serve as the foundation for these mass personalization disinformation campaigns.<p>Heck, seems like western governments are eager to start doing the same thing these days, if Snowden is to be believed, so it’s hardly conspiracy that well armed adversaries would do the same thing.<p>Also the ability to gradually influence opinion over long periods with consistent information campaigns and targeted and what I like to automated “counterpoint PR” can totally change the perceptions of society’s self-image.<p>These are insidious problems that are far deeper issues than elections, but they will read like elections every four years as that is when western democracies become acutely vulnerable to malicious actors and a whole new generation of subtle subversion and other more nefarious propaganda and influence attacks. 5th generation warfare is here.