Disinformation, Deepfakes, and other AI-Generated Threats to Women and Democracy

2024 is an historic year for democracies as nations representing nearly half of the world’s population will hold elections. In the United States, the election season has kicked off and this year, American voters will choose their next president and decide which party holds the House and Senate. This is the first national election since Generative AI took center-stage and made it easier to produce highly convincing deepfake videos, disinformation campaigns, and launch cyberattacks while the AI detection tools haven’t kept up.

Furthermore, AI-generated deepfakes are being increasingly weaponized against women. A 2019 report shows that non-consensual deepfake pornography, accounted for 96% of all deepfakes. The recent flood of explicit non-consensual deepfake images of Taylor Swift on social media sites is one of many recent examples of our ongoing exposure to image-based abuse. Social media companies are slashing their content moderation teams, further increasing the risk of disinformation and false content spreading like wildfire. These developments pose a serious risk to our communities, increase the risk of voter deception, threaten our democratic processes, and shake the public’s trust in democratic institutions.

Join Women in AI Ethics™ on March 26 for Women’s History Month, as we host a fireside chat with the Honorable Yvette D. Clarke, Member of Congress at the Brooklyn Public Library. We will discuss Rep. Clarke’s latest bill to require content provenance like digital watermarking on AI-generated videos and images and giving victims the ability to seek recourse, the urgent need to protect women from image abuse, and the importance of AI literacy programs in keeping our communities safe in the AI age.