Officials warn of election disinformation, use of AI at record high

With less than a week to go before Election Day, officials are issuing stark warnings about what’s happening online.

Palm Beach County’s elections director says the amount of misinformation on the Internet has never been seen in his six years on the job.

Security is at the top of the list of priorities as Election Day nears and election bodies across the state are seeing more and more misinformation online mixed with the use of artificial intelligence to create fake videos.

“If you talk to Homeland Security, you talk to the national level and the state level, this misinformation is coming from two places, it’s coming from abroad, but it’s also spreading domestically,” said Chief Elections Officer Wendy Sartori Link.

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The office has a full cybersecurity team that focuses on communicating with multiple agencies like the FBI and local departments to stay ahead of and stay ahead of any red flags.

Link said some of them come from abroad to influence results and cause stress among voters.

“We know that China, Iran and Russia are very much involved in using artificial intelligence to produce a lot of disinformation, and it looks real,” she said. “This makes the voters very nervous. It doesn’t help anyone, it certainly doesn’t help the democratic process.”

Link said they are working diligently to combat misinformation online. They do this by “flooding” voters with the right information. They also want to hear from you if you’ve seen anything that seems off.

“We want people to know if they see or hear something that worries them or that doesn’t seem right. Please give us a call,” she said. “Let us look into it and sort it out for you and get an answer.”

She also explained the election verification process.See below:

Security does not only exist on the Internet. They also work with police departments and other law enforcement agencies to keep the situation under control.

“We do not want any intimidation of voters at the polling stations, harassment and intimidation of voters will not be tolerated, which will be reported to the law enforcement agencies and they will deal with it accordingly,” she said.

Voters turn out in record numbers in Palm Beach County.

So far, more than 230,000 people have voted at 26 early voting stations, and another 200,000 have voted by mail.

That means about half of all eligible voters in the district have already done so.

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