NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – Months away from a major presidential election, New Mexico’s top election officials are trying to ward off what they think could be a confusing race full of misinformation created by a growing level of artificial intelligence (AI).
The New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver is launching what she calls the ‘seeing is no longer believing’ campaign, designed to help people identify when something is AI-generated. “These images and these voice reproductions and videos can be so realistic, but there are some things that are obvious that we as critical consumers of information can look for,” Toulouse Oliver said.
The campaign is launching with ads focusing on educating voters about how computer-generated AI can manipulate or even create audio, video, and photos that are easy to miss. One example is ‘deep fakes,’ which are faked audio, images, or videos that look like real people and are used to sway voters.
The new state campaign tells people what to look out for to identify fake creations and how to combat them.
“We do anticipate an expect A.I. generated content to come up around this and so again we really want to urge voters to just have their critical thinking caps on and think, you know I’m going to double check and see if this is right,” Toulouse Oliver said.
The campaign launches this week ahead of the state of early voting next week. New Mexico’s Primary Election is coming up on June 4. For more information about the campaign, click here.
