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 …
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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 …
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Earlier this month, a German court ruled that the country’s nationalist far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), was potentially “extremist” and could warrant surveillance by the country’s intelligence apparatus. Campaign ads placed by AfD have been allowed to appear on Facebook and Instagram anyway, according to a new report from …
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Two things happened this week that got me really worried about AI’s role in the US election: First, WIRED published a massive story on how voters in India have received over 50 million deepfaked voice calls imitating candidates and political figures. That’s a lot of deepfakes, and voters are confusing …
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Twitter is officially dead. Last week, twitter.com became x.com, marking the final step in a rebranding effort that the company’s owner, Elon Musk, announced last year. The change marks a shift for the now birdless app under Musk’s reign, which has welcomed Nazis and white supremacists back to the platform, …
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In 2017, Pratik Sinha and Mohammed Zubair cofounded the fact-checking website AltNews in India. Almost immediately, the pair were targeted with persistent and vicious attacks from the far-right news website OpIndia. Many of the attacks claimed that Zubair was a Rohingya Muslim who illegally migrated to India and that his …
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Within minutes of the news breaking on Wednesday afternoon that Slovak prime minister Robert Fico had been shot, a widespread Russian disinformation campaign to blame Ukraine for the assassination attempt was launched by state-run media, hugely popular pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, and bot accounts on X. Fico was shot five times …
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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 …
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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 …
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On Wednesday, members of the US Senate Intelligence Committee questioned senior national security officials on how they plan to respond to attacks on voting infrastructure and attempts to influence the election using deepfakes, generative AI, and misinformation. While everyone in the room appeared to agree on what the threats are, …
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