A.I. Election Videos Are Flooding Brazil. Could They Sway the Vote?

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

See Some of the Fake A.I. Videos Flooding Brazil’s Election

Videos made with artificial intelligence, ranging from the amusing and absurd to the grim and deceitful, have flooded the Brazilian internet ahead of a high-stakes presidential election on Sunday.

This has turned Latin America’s largest democracy into a real-time laboratory for the electoral use of A.I., offering parallels to the United States, where critical midterm elections approach, and to other nations grappling with the effect of powerful new technologies on political life.

But in Brazil, a chronically online nation of 214 million where disinformation has defined elections for nearly a decade, the deluge of A.I. — made by candidates, strategists and ordinary citizens — has become a stark gauge of the nation’s capacity to police online content.

Online disinformation is already a hallmark of Brazil’s electoral season, but A.I.’s prevalence and advancing sophistication are posing a major new challenge for the Brazilian authorities working to protect the integrity of the country’s vote.

Brazil, which has some of the world’s strictest regulations against electoral falsehoods, has issued equally stringent rules on A.I. use during elections. But these guardrails have remained largely untested until now.

“We made the rules, now we’re watching to see what happens,” said Kássio Nunes Marques, chief justice of Brazil’s electoral court, which oversees the vote.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT