How Artificial Intelligence Could Impact Elections

Atlantic journalists talk the future of election interference in an era of chilling political deepfakes — and, the one company behind much of this tech.

This year, two events will collide: AI voice replicas that can fool family and friends will be easier than ever to use, and half the world’s population will undergo an election. 

As part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival in early May, Hanna Rosin, the host of Radio Atlantic, and Charlie Warzel, a staff writer for The Atlantic who covers technology, explored the strange and potentially catastrophic effects of this collision.  

In this episode of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival podcast, Rosin and Warzel examine the big trends in AI, particularly that of shockingly accurate voice clones, and discuss the one small company behind much of this software. They dig into how this technology could be deployed to interfere with elections and how likely it is to sway voters. They play clips of a variety of convincing deepfakes, including the fake President Biden robocall sent to voters in a recent New Hampshire primary, and speculate about a very uncertain future.   

This conversation was recorded on May 4, 2024. 

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Credits

Host: Paris Jackson

Producer: Isaac Kaplan-Woolner

Event producers: Jake Newman, Anne O'Dowd

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