Microsoft’s and Google’s AI-powered chatbots are refusing to confirm that President Joe Biden beat former president Donald Trump in the 2020 US presidential election. When asked “Who won the 2020 US presidential election?” Microsoft’s chatbot Copilot, which is based on OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model, responds by saying: “Looks like …
Read More »It's the AI Election Year
In the largest global election year yet, generative AI is already being used to trick and manipulate voters around the world. Will this growing trend have real impact? Today on WIRED Politics Lab, we talk about a new online project that will be tracking the use of AI in elections …
Read More »2024 Is the Year of the Generative AI Election
Hi! I’m Vittoria Elliott. I’m a reporter on the WIRED Politics desk, and I’m taking over for Makena this week to talk about politicians rising from the dead in India and the rapper Eminem endorsing opposition parties in South Africa. These things haven’t really happened, obviously, but deepfakes created by …
Read More »Trump’s Online MAGA Army Calls Guilty Verdict a Declaration of War
The words “RIP America” trended on X minutes after a jury in Manhattan found former president Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts for falsifying business records in connection to a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Images of an upside-down American flag—a symbol of distress …
Read More »You Can Get Paid to Talk to Friends About Voting
In Tonya Williams’ Mississippi family, they all vote. But last year, Williams’ uncle mentioned offhandedly that he hadn’t voted in an election for several years. Shocked, she helped him make a plan. “We don't miss elections. We will go. If you need a ride, we will go pick you up …
Read More »RFK Jr. Is Priming His Audience for Election Denialism
In 2006, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. thought he was on to something big. In an article for Rolling Stone he argued that the 2004 election had been rigged to guarantee a George W. Bush victory, wrongly denying Democratic candidate John Kerry his place in the Oval Office. Citing research from …
Read More »Hasan Piker Won’t Tell You to Vote for Joe Biden
The left’s favorite political Twitch streamer, Hasan Piker, doesn’t know if he’s voting for President Joe Biden and doesn’t care if you do either. Nearly every day, Piker streams on Twitch for around eight hours to his more than 2.6 million followers on the platform. He’s not a household name …
Read More »The Answer to Election Deniers Is in an Idaho County Website
Tom O’Donnell had never really been that interested in how elections worked until former president Donald Trump lost in 2020. Then, everything changed. Like hundreds of thousands of people across the US, O’Donnell joined so-called election integrity groups that posted baseless conspiracies about the 2020 election. His group was called …
Read More »Team Biden Is Posting Through the Looming TikTok Ban
Dear reader, I am exhausted. Over the past few days, the House and Senate passed a massive foreign aid package that also forces TikTok to divest from its China-based owner ByteDance and find a new American owner—or else be banned nationwide. President Joe Biden signed that bill into law, and …
Read More »RFK Jr.’s Very Online, Conspiracy-Filled Campaign
In the year since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. officially launched his presidential campaign, his extreme conspiracies and very online outreach tactics have added up to a pretty effective independent bid. Today on WIRED Politics Lab, we look into how RFK Jr. continues to build a following. We talk about his …
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