We Looked at 78 Election Deepfakes. Political Misinformation is not an AI Problem.

Technology Isn’t the Problem—or the Solution.

AI-generated misinformation was one of the top concerns during the 2024 U.S. presidential election. In January 2024, the World Economic Forum claimed that “misinformation and disinformation is the most severe short-term risk the world faces” and that “AI is amplifying manipulated and distorted information that could destabilize societies.” News headlines about elections in 2024 tell a similar story: In contrast, in our past writing, we predicted that AI would not lead to a misinformation apocalypse. When Meta released its open-weight large language model (called LLaMA), we argued that it…

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