Commission says disinformation efforts failed to sway EU election

She will present the findings of her so-called democracy tour this past spring, when she visited a dozen EU countries to raise awareness about election manipulation by rogue actors, meeting with officials, regulators and experts: “I felt the pressure to ring the bell of the election integrity and to protect them against Putin’s and others’ manipulation and interference.”

At the start of this big election year, fears were rampant that artificial intelligence — more specifically, highly manipulative deepfakes — could destabilize the process.

These concerns didn’t materialize and the technology has not been used “to a large extent,” the EU analysis says, despite some cases of unlabeled AI-generated content use by parties, such as France’s National Rally and Italy’s League.

“We were predicting, you know, more problems this year than there has been,” Elsa Pilichowski, the OECD’s public governance director, said, confirming that AI hadn’t been a “game changer” in the election proceedings.

Europe dodged the bullet this year, but that doesn’t mean it will have similar luck next time.

Currently, governments are not ready to deal with the risk of generative AI hijacking ballots, Pilichowski warned. Officials “are discussing policy options. They are in the process of getting ready. But I don’t think we are ready yet for the risks that are coming up,” she said.