AI will change American elections, but not in the obvious way

THE day before Chicago’s mayoral election in February, a recording began circulating online. It was first posted on Twitter (now X) by a newly created account called Chicago Lakefront News. It featured what sounded like Paul Vallas, the law-and-order candidate, bemoaning all the fuss about police brutality and harking back to a halcyon time when cops could kill suspects by the dozen “and no one would bat an eye”. It was political dynamite and was quickly shared by thousands. But the voice in the recording was not Mr Vallas’s, nor any human’s: it was a “deepfake”, generated by artificial-intelligence (AI) software, which had been trained to mimic the sound of Mr Vallas’s voice.