Artificial intelligence lab OpenAI published a blog post this week seeking to address fears that its technology will meddle with elections, as more than a third of the globe prepares to head to the polls this year.
The use of AI to interfere with election integrity has been a concern since the Microsoft-backed company released two products: ChatGPT, which can mimic human writing convincingly, and Dall-E, whose technology can be used to create "deepfakes," or realistic-looking images that are fabricated.
Those worried include OpenAI's own CEO Sam Altman, who testified in Congress in May that he was "nervous" about generative AI's ability to compromise election integrity through "one-on-one interactive disinformation."
The San Francisco-based company said that in the United States, which will hold presidential elections this year, it is working with the National Association of Secretaries of State, an organisation that focuses on promoting effective democratic processes such as elections.
ChatGPT will direct users to CanIVote.org when asked certain election-related questions, it added.
The company also said it is working on making it more obvious when images are AI-generated using Dall-E, and is planning to put a "cr" icon on images to indicate it was AI-generated, following a protocol created by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity.
It is also working on ways to identify Dall-E-generated content even after images have been modified.
In its blog post, OpenAI emphasised that its policies prohibit its technology to be used in ways it has identified as potentially abusive, such as creating chatbots pretending to be real people, or discouraging voting.
It also prohibits Dall-E from creating images of real people, including political candidates, it said.
The company faces challenges policing what is actually happening on its platform.
When Reuters last year tried to create images of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the request was blocked and a message appeared saying it "may not follow our content policy."
Reuters, however, was able to create images of at least a dozen other US politicians, including former Vice President Mike Pence.
Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said he had no issue with partner OpenAI's governance structure, two months after the startup's non-profit board temporarily ousted its chief executive without regard to investors' interests.
The surprise November dismissal of OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman over an alleged communication breakdown triggered a crisis at the startup behind ChatGPT, in which employees threatened to resign en masse and go work for Microsoft, which is backing OpenAI with billions of dollars.
"I'm comfortable. I have no issues with any structure," Nadella said at a Bloomberg News event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos.
OpenAI's board, charged with protecting the startup non-profit's mission to develop powerful artificial intelligence that benefits humanity, ultimately restored Altman days later and now is in the process of filling out its membership.
"I expect us to make a lot of progress on that in the coming months," OpenAI CEO Altman said at a later Bloomberg event in Davos. "And then after that, the new board will take a look at the governance structure." "We'll go look at it from all angles," he said. Microsoft has now secured a non-voting observer position on the OpenAI board. — Reuters
ANNA TONG
The writer is the tech correspondent at Reuters
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