Russia and Iran using AI to influence US election: DNI

Russia and Iran are using artificial intelligence to influence the American election, U.S. intelligence officials said on Monday.

"Foreign actors are using AI to more quickly and convincingly tailor synthetic content," an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. "The IC (intelligence community) considers AI a malign influence, accelerant, not yet a revolutionary influence tool."

Officials saw AI being used in overseas elections, but it has now made its way to American elections, according to intelligence officials, who says there is evidence Russian manipulated Vice President Kamala Harris' speeches.

Russia "has generated the most AI content related to the election, and has done so across all four mediums, text, images, audio and video," an ODNI official said.

"These items include AI generated content of and about prominent U.S. figures whose content is also consistent with Russia's broader efforts to boost the former president's candidacy and denigrate the Vice President and the Democratic Party, including through conspiratorial narratives," according to an ODNI official.

Russian AI content has sought to exploit hot-button issues to further divide Americans, the ODNI said.

"The IC also assesses that Russian influence actors were responsible for altering videos of the vice president's speeches," the official said.

Russia's altering of videos runs the "gamut" from painting her in a personal bad light, in comparison to her opponent and they are using both AI and staged videos, the official said.

The country was targeting President Joe Biden's former campaign, but once he dropped out of the race it had to "adapt" to targeting the vice president's campaign, the official said.

"Russia is a much more sophisticated actor in the influence space in general, and they have a better understanding of how U.S. elections work and what states to target," an ODNI official said.

Iran has also used AI in its election influence efforts, including help in writing fake social media posts and news articles to further Iran's objectives, which are to denigrate the former President Donald Trump's candidacy, the official said.

Iran is also using AI to sow discord on hot-button issues, an official said.

"One of the benefits of generative AI models is to overcome various language barriers, and so Iran can use the tools to help do that, and so one of the issues that could be attractive or using foreign language for that is immigration," an ODNI official said. "The reason why Iran is focused on immigration is because they perceive it to be a divisive issue in the United States, and they identify themes, and this is broadly speaking, they identify themes with which they think will create further discord in the United States."

Officials have previously assessed Iran prefers that Vice President Harris win the 2024 election.

China has also been using AI to generate fake news anchors and social media content with pro-China propaganda, they said.

The intelligence community assesses that AI is an "accelerant" to influence operations, but the risk to U.S. elections depends the ability of foreign actors to overcome restrictions built into many AI tools and remain undetected, develop their own sophisticated models, and strategically target and disseminate such content.

Adversaries are also using AI to go back and forth with people in the comments.

As to whether what occurred in 2020 might happen again -- where the election might not be called on Election Day -- this period is something the IC is "watching" closely and is of "great interest."

"The various influence actors have fairly steady state influence operations that seek the stoking of division and undermine U.S. democracy," an ODNI official said.

During the Democratic primaries, the use of an AI generated robocall was used to give misinformation about voting the result was state criminal charges being brought against the individual who sent the recording and an FCC fine.

A foreign adversary engaging in that tactic would be a "top concern" for intelligence officials, an official said.