Freedom House A computer displays a broadcast from House of News Español, a nonexistent news channel created by the company Synthesia. The broadcast featured an AI-generated avatar and presented progovernment coverage of Venezuela's economy. (Freedom House) audio clip spread on social media, purportedly implicating an opposition presidential candidate in plans to rig balloting. The content threatened to inflame both partisan animosity and long-standing doubts about the integrity of the electoral system. AI-manipulated content was also used to smear electoral opponents in the United States. Accounts affiliated with the campaigns of former president Donald Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, both seeking the Republican Party’s nomination for the 2024 presidential election, shared videos with AI-generated content to undermine each other’s candidacy. One video included three fabricated images of Trump embracing Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the federal government’s COVID-19 response and remains deeply unpopular among critics of pandemic mitigation measures. By placing the fabricated images alongside three genuine photos, the video muddied the distinction between fact and fiction for Republican primary voters. Similarly, in February 2023, a manipulated video that depicted President Biden making transphobic comments spread rapidly across social media. It was presumably created to discredit Biden among voters who support the rights of transgender Americans, which have been under attack in large parts of the country. @freedomhouse AI companies are already being enlisted for state-linked disinformation campaigns. In early 2023, Venezuelan state media outlets used social media to distribute videos produced by Synthesia that depicted news anchors from a nonexistent international English-language channel spreading progovernment messages. Synthesia generates synthetic media for its clients by combining a machinelearning algorithm with videos of paid actors. The research firm Graphika has also linked the company to a campaign to spread pro-CCP disinformation via the nonexistent news station Wolf News to audiences in the United States, though the videos in question were of poor quality and did not achieve significant reach. During the February 2023 Nigerian elections, an AI-manipulated audio clip spread on social media, purportedly implicating an opposition presidential candidate in plans to rig balloting. freedomhouse.org 11