Artificial intelligence at the ballot box

In January, some New Hampshire voters thought they had gotten a robo call from Joe Biden, telling them to skip voting in the state primary. 

The robocall voice at the other end of the phone wasn’t Biden at all. In fact it was a deepfake, created by a political consultant working for a longshot democratic challenger to Biden. The audio itself was made by a magician in Texas, using a simple website that created the deepfake using text-to- speech audio using AI. 

The fake Biden robocall shows how easy it could become to use AI to disrupt an election but that isn't the whole story.

In this episode of Storylines, producer Craig Desson takes us around the world to see how election officials, politicians and academics are grappling with how AI might impact our elections as hundreds of millions go to the polls this year. 

The situation is troubling, but there are also ways AI brings new possibilities to democracies around the world. 

Reported and Produced by Craig Desson. Story Editing by Joan Webber. Originally aired on Sunday Magazine. 

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit