OLYMPIA, Wash – Washington’s primary election is Tuesday and elections officials are warning voters about deepfakes and other misinformation that have already been seen this election cycle.
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs pointed to several instances in a news release sent Monday.
“As we move through Washington’s August 6 Primary and toward the November 5 General Election, I am concerned that a deluge of manipulated and false information may be inserted into social media from foreign actors and other sources,” Secretary Hobbs said. “Artificial Intelligence is getting easier and cheaper to manipulate for a broad number of malicious actors. The rest of us must be careful to verify what we see before we take it to heart.”
Hobbs is up for reelection and is facing three challengers in the primary.
He specifically pointed to a post on X/formerly Twitter on July 26th.
In that post, Elon Musk shared a manipulated video purporting to be Vice President Kamala Harris.
Hobbs joined the secretaries of state from Minnesota, Michigan, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania in a public letter to Elon Musk, asking for changes to X’s AI assistant Grok.
The leaders say Grok has pointed people to misinformation about candidates and ballot deadlines.
“Voters should not be misled about how our elections function,” Secretary Hobbs said. “The owners of social media platforms must take responsibility for safeguarding their audiences against the spread of false information, and this includes stopping their own AI mechanisms from generating it.”
Hobbs encourages people to get their information from trusted sources like the state’s elections website and county elections websites.
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