Election Meddling Once again, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — whose November launch of the popular chatbot ChatGPT arguably kicked off the widespread public adoption of generative AI technology — is worried about the impacts of the technology that he’s actively working to build. This time, he’s concerned about the potentially destructive effects that generative AI tools may have on the democratic process, arguing that high-quality and hyper-targeted synthetic media stand to be a powerful and potentially damaging force in future elections — a fear that’s already been raised by a number of experts and industry leaders. “I am nervous about the impact AI is going to have on future elections (at least until everyone gets used to it),” Altman wrote in an X-formerly-Twitter post on Thursday, “personalized 1:1 persuasion, combined with high-quality generated media, is going to be a powerful force.” Point Taken It’s a fair concern. AI-generated media has already been used in multiple American campaign ads related to the 2024 election, most notably by the likes of the Republican National Committee and the campaign of presidential hopeful Ron Desantis, which used AI tools to generate fake images of an imagined China-US invasion and President Joe Biden smooching former US pandemic response figurehead Anthony Fauci, respectively. AI-spun misinformation has also already proved itself to be pretty convincing. Though it was quickly debunked as fake news, a likely AI-generated photo of a bombing nearby the Pentagon, for instance, caused a brief but notable dip in the stock market after going viral…Sam Altman Fears AI’s Effect on Elections