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The 2024 U.S. presidential election was supposed to be the “first AI election.” Experts warned that generative AI could flood voters with deepfakes and fabricated evidence of fraud, U.S. intelligence officials declassified intel reports on foreign influence operations already experimenting with the technology, and leading AI companies pledged to combat deceptive election content. But foreign nations faced significant barriers to deploying AI to influence that election, according to the now-shuttered U.S. Foreign Malign Influence Center.

Two years later, the picture looks very different. AI tools have become far more sophisticated and widely available. Russia, China, and Iran are deploying a wide variety of cutting-edge AI tools in more sophisticated ways in foreign influence operations aimed at the United States and its citizens, among others. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has itself used AI in misleading ways, while at the same time dismantling or defunding the federal and independent bodies that identified and countered election-related influence campaigns. With the potential for AI-driven misinformation campaigns to escalate sharply in this year’s midterms, we tested some of the most popular AI models to learn how they can be exploited to peddle false election narratives. The results are clear: AI companies, lawmakers, and civil society must do more to blunt the threat ahead of elections this November and in 2028 to help ensure free and fair elections. We outline the steps they can take to do so below.