‘We’re not immune': AEC says AI-generated misinformation is possible in next Australian election

The Australian Electoral Commission confirmed in a senate select committee that Australia is not immune to election misinformation generated by AI.

Transcript

00:00we're seeing increased use of those sorts of tactics in elections around the world.

00:04I don't think we're going to be immune to that. So we could expect things like that to occur

00:09at the next election. What sort of urgency would you like to sort of

00:15voice when it comes to the need to have this dealt with before the next election? Are we leaving

00:21ourselves open to not just the unknown, but all these things we've seen around the world from

00:27the US to South Korea, which has been well publicised? Yeah, look, it's a rapidly developing

00:34area, Senator. I think we've said, I know that there's a work of this committee. I think the

00:38JSCM committee on Thursday has an element of AI. I know that there are other committees that have

00:43looked at this. I think there's unlikely to be widespread legislation in place before the next

00:49election. And just for the record, I don't know when that election is, just for people listening.

00:54And also, even if the need for a national digital literacy campaign,

01:00I'm not sure whether that would be up. I don't know whether another department is working on

01:03that at the moment. But there are certainly things we need to do quickly to look at this.

01:09One of my concerns is, as I mentioned at the start, at election time, anything that's got

01:13election in it comes to the AEC and people say, well, why isn't the AEC dealing with that? And

01:18quite often, it's because our legislative toolkit is very constrained with what we can

01:22deal with and not deal with.