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The latest measures come as Donald Trump inches closer to facing Biden in the US presidential election later this year after winning the Iowa caucus yesterday.
The year ahead will see some of the world’s biggest democracies conduct elections to choose their next leaders, or keep existing ones in power, such as the United States, India, the European Parliament and Indonesia, and AI will certainly have an influence.
OpenAI, the company currently at the helm of innovation in generative artificial intelligence, says it wants to make sure its technology is not misused to influence any of these elections negatively, and to that end announced some new policies yesterday (15 January).
This includes measure directed at preventing abuse of generative AI chatbots and image creators such as ChatGPT and Dall-E.
“We’re still working to understand how effective our tools might be for personalised persuasion. Until we know more, we don’t allow people to build applications for political campaigning and lobbying,” the company headed by Sam Altman wrote.
OpenAI will also not allow developers to create chatbots that pretend to be real people such as political candidates or government institutions, or applications that “deter people” from voting by misrepresenting eligibility or discouraging voting.
Users who notice violations of OpenAI policies across its products can also report them, the company said.
“ChatGPT is increasingly integrating with existing sources of information – for example, users will start to get access to real-time news reporting globally, including attribution and links,” OpenAI went on.
“Transparency around the origin of information and balance in news sources can help voters better assess information and decide for themselves what they can trust.”
The company is also working with the US National Association of Secretaries of State, a nonpartisan professional organisation for public officials, to improve access to authoritative voting information through its AI products.
“Lessons from this work will inform our approach in other countries and regions,” OpenAI wrote.
The latest polices come as former US president Donald Trump just won a landslide victory at the Iowa caucus, cementing his status as the clear frontrunner from the Republican Party in the US elections in November this year.
Last year, both Meta and Microsoft announced new measures to deal with the risks of AI and deepfakes disrupting elections worldwide, including AI watermarking services and new disclosure requirements for advertisers.
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