Will Artificial Intelligence (AI) Influence the Upcoming Presidential Election?

That’s a question many are asking these days, and it is a real concern. But it doesn’t only apply to the presidential election. Consider an incident earlier this year:

Right before the Chicago mayoral election in February, a Twitter account posing as a news site posted an audio interview of one of the candidates making an inflammatory statement designed to make him look bad. The audio, however, was fake. The candidate never made the statement, but thousands listened to the recording.

With the help of AI, these kinds of tricks are easier to pull off. Here are a few ways your vote could be influenced:

• Fake Quotes or Videos. Like the incident above, you may come across an image, video, or recording of a candidate doing or saying something he or she never did.
• Spreading Deceptive Information. AI can be used to create social media bots and spread false information on candidates, or make them appear to have more public support than they actually do.
• Micro-targeting. Campaigns can use AI algorithms to more easily identify issues that resonate with you and craft messages that appeal to your values. This is not bad . . . unless the candidate doesn’t actually believe in those messages. The trouble is, how do you know what a candidate truly believes?

iVoterGuide’s Research is a Reliable Source!

I believe iVoterGuide is uniquely equipped to help you meet this challenge of separating truth from falsehoods. We are careful about how we source our data and vet the information upon which our candidate ratings are based.

Here’s how our research can give you an accurate picture of each candidate beyond their talking points . . . and any misinformation about them:

1. Verified Content – We make sure that the website and social media pages we evaluate and include in our guide truly belong to the candidate and are not fake sites created by someone else.
2. Citing our sources – When we include extra information on a candidate (such as a noteworthy action they’ve taken), we are careful to go to original sources wherever possible and provide publicly verifiable sources so you can check it out yourself.
3. Legislative Scorecards – If a candidate has served in the state legislature or Congress, we record how various conservative and liberal organizations have rated their votes. This information is collected from original or trusted sources, not social media posts that could be faked.
4. Financial Contributions – The information in this section of your voter guide only comes from official government websites such as the Federal Election Commission and state agencies like the Secretary of State’s website.
5. Endorsements – It’s risky for a candidate to fabricate an endorsement and publicly announce it. Still, our researchers are instructed to use discernment when considering the validity of endorsement announcements.
6. Answers to our Questionnaire – When candidates fill out our detailed questionnaire, our system logs each time they go into the questionnaire, and with few exceptions, you see exactly what the candidate wrote. (We do edit out profanity and slander, and make corrections only when the candidate specifically requests it via email.)
7. Candidate Ratings – Our ratings must be based on publicly verifiable information about each candidate, factor in all the data we have gathered, and align with our criteria. This guards against basing a rating on one video or social media post that may or may not be accurate. Sometimes, “Insufficient Information” is the only rating we can give.

At a time when many are concerned about what is fake and what is real, iVoterGuide is here to help you vote with confidence.

As we ask the question, “What is truth?”, God revealed something to me last night when I was going through Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God with a friend. He said, “Truth is not a concept we study. Truth is a person!” I am so glad that I know the one who is the Truth—Jesus Christ. (John 14:6) Our love for Him and the people we serve drives us to find, evaluate, and deliver the truth about candidates to as many voters as possible.

Please pray for our team as we meet this challenge. Together, let’s be a beacon of truth in a sea of deception.