AI Models Spread Election Misinformation in Spanish, Raising Concerns for Latino Voters

How AI models, including Facebook's, are spreading election misinformation in Spanish

With just days before the presidential election, Latino voters are facing a barrage of targeted ads in Spanish and a new source of political messaging in the artificial intelligence age: chatbots generating unfounded claims in Spanish about voting rights. AI models are producing a stream of election-related falsehoods in Spanish more frequently than in English, muddying the quality of election-related information for one of the nation's fastest-growing and increasingly influential voting blocs, according to an analysis by two nonprofit newsrooms. Voting rights groups worry AI models may deepen information disparities for Spanish-speaking voters, who are being heavily courted by Democrats and Republicans up and down the ballot. Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a rally Thursday in Las Vegas featuring singer Jennifer Lopez and Mexican band Maná. Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, held an event Tuesday in a Hispanic region of Pennsylvania, just two days after fallout from insulting comments made by a speaker about Puerto Rico at a New York rally. The two organizations, Proof News and Factchequeado, collaborated with the Science, Technology and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study to test how popular AI models responded to specific prompts in the run-up to Election Day on Nov. 5, and rated the answers. More than half of the elections-related responses generated in Spanish contained incorrect information, as compared to 43% of responses in English, they found. Meta's model Llama 3, which has powered the AI assistant inside WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, was among those that fared the worst in the test, getting nearly two-thirds of all responses wrong in Spanish, compared to roughly half in English. For example, Meta's AI botched a response to a question about what it means if someone is a "federal only" voter. In Arizona, such voters did not provide the state with proof of citizenship -- generally because they registered with a form that didn't require it -- and are only eligible to vote in presidential and congressional elections. Meta's AI model, however, falsely responded by saying that "federal only" voters are people who live in U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico or Guam, who cannot vote in presidential elections. In response to the same question, Anthropic's Claude model directed the user to contact election authorities in "your country or region," like Mexico and Venezuela. Google's AI model Gemini also made mistakes. When it was asked to define the Electoral College, Gemini responded with a nonsensical answer about issues with "manipulating the vote." Meta spokesman Tracy Clayton said Llama 3 was meant to be used by developers to build other products, and added that Meta was training its models on safety and responsibility guidelines to lower the likelihood that they share inaccurate responses about voting. Anthropic's head of policy and enforcement, Alex Sanderford, said the company had made changes to better address Spanish-language queries that should redirect users to authoritative sources on voting-related issues. Google did not respond to requests for comment. Voting rights advocates have been warning for months that Spanish-speaking voters are facing an onslaught of misinformation from online sources and AI models. The new analysis provides further evidence that voters must be careful about where they get election information, said Lydia Guzman, who leads a voter advocacy campaign at Chicanos Por La Causa. "It's important for every voter to do proper research and not just at one entity, at several, to see together the right information and ask credible organizations for the right information," Guzman said. Trained on vast troves of material pulled from the internet, large language models provide AI-generated answers, but are still prone to producing illogical responses. Even if Spanish-speaking voters are not using chatbots, they might encounter AI models when using tools, apps or websites that rely on them. Such inaccuracies could have a greater impact in states with large Hispanic populations, such as Arizona, Nevada, Florida and California. Nearly one-third of all eligible voters in California, for example, are Latino, and one in five of Latino eligible voters only speak Spanish, the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute found. Rommell Lopez, a California paralegal, sees himself as an independent thinker who has multiple social media accounts and uses OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT. When trying to verify unfounded claims that immigrants ate pets, he said he encountered a bewildering number of different responses online, some AI-generated. In the end, he said he relied on his common sense. "We can trust technology, but not 100 percent," said Lopez, 46, of Los Angeles. "At the end of the day they're machines."

Voting rights groups worry AI models are generating inaccurate and misleading responses in Spanish

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- With just days before the presidential election, Latino voters are facing a barrage of targeted ads in Spanish and a new source of political messaging in the artificial intelligence age: chatbots generating unfounded claims in Spanish about voting rights. AI models are producing a stream of election-related falsehoods in Spanish more frequently than in English, muddying the quality of election-related information for one of the nation's fastest-growing and increasingly influential voting blocs, according to an analysis by two nonprofit newsrooms. Voting rights groups worry AI models may deepen information disparities for Spanish-speaking voters, who are being heavily courted by Democrats and Republicans up and down the ballot. Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a rally Thursday in Las Vegas featuring singer Jennifer Lopez and Mexican band Maná. Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, held an event Tuesday in a Hispanic region of Pennsylvania, just two days after fallout from insulting comments made by a speaker about Puerto Rico at a New York rally. The two organizations, Proof News and Factchequeado, collaborated with the Science, Technology and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study to test how popular AI models responded to specific prompts in the run-up to Election Day on Nov. 5, and rated the answers. More than half of the elections-related responses generated in Spanish contained incorrect information, as compared to 43% of responses in English, they found. Meta's model Llama 3, which has powered the AI assistant inside WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, was among those that fared the worst in the test, getting nearly two-thirds of all responses wrong in Spanish, compared to roughly half in English. For example, Meta's AI botched a response to a question about what it means if someone is a "federal only" voter. In Arizona, such voters did not provide the state with proof of citizenship -- generally because they registered with a form that didn't require it -- and are only eligible to vote in presidential and congressional elections. Meta's AI model, however, falsely responded by saying that "federal only" voters are people who live in U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico or Guam, who cannot vote in presidential elections. In response to the same question, Anthropic's Claude model directed the user to contact election authorities in "your country or region," like Mexico and Venezuela. Google's AI model Gemini also made mistakes. When it was asked to define the Electoral College, Gemini responded with a nonsensical answer about issues with "manipulating the vote." Meta spokesman Tracy Clayton said Llama 3 was meant to be used by developers to build other products, and added that Meta was training its models on safety and responsibility guidelines to lower the likelihood that they share inaccurate responses about voting. Anthropic's head of policy and enforcement, Alex Sanderford, said the company had made changes to better address Spanish-language queries that should redirect users to authoritative sources on voting-related issues. Google did not respond to requests for comment. Voting rights advocates have been warning for months that Spanish-speaking voters are facing an onslaught of misinformation from online sources and AI models. The new analysis provides further evidence that voters must be careful about where they get election information, said Lydia Guzman, who leads a voter advocacy campaign at Chicanos Por La Causa. "It's important for every voter to do proper research and not just at one entity, at several, to see together the right information and ask credible organizations for the right information," Guzman said. Trained on vast troves of material pulled from the internet, large language models provide AI-generated answers, but are still prone to producing illogical responses. Even if Spanish-speaking voters are not using chatbots, they might encounter AI models when using tools, apps or websites that rely on them. Such inaccuracies could have a greater impact in states with large Hispanic populations, such as Arizona, Nevada, Florida and California. Nearly one-third of all eligible voters in California, for example, are Latino, and one in five of Latino eligible voters only speak Spanish, the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute found. Rommell Lopez, a California paralegal, sees himself as an independent thinker who has multiple social media accounts and uses OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT. When trying to verify unfounded claims that immigrants ate pets, he said he encountered a bewildering number of different responses online, some AI-generated. In the end, he said he relied on his common sense. "We can trust technology, but not 100 percent," said Lopez, 46, of Los Angeles. "At the end of the day they're machines." Salomon reported from Miami. Associated Press writer Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report. This story is part of an Associated Press series, "The AI Campaign," exploring the influence of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election cycle. The Associated Press receives financial assistance from the Omidyar Network to support coverage of artificial intelligence and its impact on society. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Voting rights groups worry AI models are generating inaccurate and misleading responses in Spanish

SAN FRANCISCO -- With just days before the presidential election, Latino voters are facing a barrage of targeted ads in Spanish and a new source of political messaging in the artificial intelligence age: chatbots generating unfounded claims in Spanish about voting rights. AI models are producing a stream of election-related falsehoods in Spanish more frequently than in English, muddying the quality of election-related information for one of the nation's fastest-growing and increasingly influential voting blocs, according to an analysis by two nonprofit newsrooms. Voting rights groups worry AI models may deepen information disparities for Spanish-speaking voters, who are being heavily courted by Democrats and Republicans up and down the ballot. Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a rally Thursday in Las Vegas featuring singer Jennifer Lopez and Mexican band Maná. Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, held an event Tuesday in a Hispanic region of Pennsylvania, just two days after fallout from insulting comments made by a speaker about Puerto Rico at a New York rally. The two organizations, Proof News and Factchequeado, collaborated with the Science, Technology and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study to test how popular AI models responded to specific prompts in the run-up to Election Day on Nov. 5, and rated the answers. More than half of the elections-related responses generated in Spanish contained incorrect information, as compared to 43% of responses in English, they found. Meta's model Llama 3, which has powered the AI assistant inside WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, was among those that fared the worst in the test, getting nearly two-thirds of all responses wrong in Spanish, compared to roughly half in English. For example, Meta's AI botched a response to a question about what it means if someone is a "federal only" voter. In Arizona, such voters did not provide the state with proof of citizenship -- generally because they registered with a form that didn't require it -- and are only eligible to vote in presidential and congressional elections. Meta's AI model, however, falsely responded by saying that "federal only" voters are people who live in U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico or Guam, who cannot vote in presidential elections. In response to the same question, Anthropic's Claude model directed the user to contact election authorities in "your country or region," like Mexico and Venezuela. Google's AI model Gemini also made mistakes. When it was asked to define the Electoral College, Gemini responded with a nonsensical answer about issues with "manipulating the vote." Meta spokesman Tracy Clayton said Llama 3 was meant to be used by developers to build other products, and added that Meta was training its models on safety and responsibility guidelines to lower the likelihood that they share inaccurate responses about voting. Anthropic's head of policy and enforcement, Alex Sanderford, said the company had made changes to better address Spanish-language queries that should redirect users to authoritative sources on voting-related issues. Google did not respond to requests for comment. Voting rights advocates have been warning for months that Spanish-speaking voters are facing an onslaught of misinformation from online sources and AI models. The new analysis provides further evidence that voters must be careful about where they get election information, said Lydia Guzman, who leads a voter advocacy campaign at Chicanos Por La Causa. "It's important for every voter to do proper research and not just at one entity, at several, to see together the right information and ask credible organizations for the right information," Guzman said. Trained on vast troves of material pulled from the internet, large language models provide AI-generated answers, but are still prone to producing illogical responses. Even if Spanish-speaking voters are not using chatbots, they might encounter AI models when using tools, apps or websites that rely on them. Such inaccuracies could have a greater impact in states with large Hispanic populations, such as Arizona, Nevada, Florida and California. Nearly one-third of all eligible voters in California, for example, are Latino, and one in five of Latino eligible voters only speak Spanish, the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute found. Rommell Lopez, a California paralegal, sees himself as an independent thinker who has multiple social media accounts and uses OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT. When trying to verify unfounded claims that immigrants ate pets, he said he encountered a bewildering number of different responses online, some AI-generated. In the end, he said he relied on his common sense. "We can trust technology, but not 100 percent," said Lopez, 46, of Los Angeles. "At the end of the day they're machines." ___ Salomon reported from Miami. Associated Press writer Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report. ___ This story is part of an Associated Press series, "The AI Campaign," exploring the influence of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election cycle. ___ The Associated Press receives financial assistance from the Omidyar Network to support coverage of artificial intelligence and its impact on society. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Latino voters say they're being targeted by AI-generated ads in Spanish with incorrect voting information -- and Facebook's model is one of the worst offenders

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- With just days before the presidential election, Latino voters are facing a barrage of targeted ads in Spanish and a new source of political messaging in the artificial intelligence age: chatbots generating unfounded claims in Spanish about voting rights. AI models are producing a stream of election-related falsehoods in Spanish more frequently than in English, muddying the quality of election-related information for one of the nation's fastest-growing and increasingly influential voting blocs, according to an analysis by two nonprofit newsrooms. Voting rights groups worry AI models may deepen information disparities for Spanish-speaking voters, who are being heavily courted by Democrats and Republicans up and down the ballot. Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a rally Thursday in Las Vegas featuring singer Jennifer Lopez and Mexican band Maná. Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, held an event Tuesday in a Hispanic region of Pennsylvania, just two days after fallout from insulting comments made by a speaker about Puerto Rico at a New York rally. The two organizations, Proof News and Factchequeado, collaborated with the Science, Technology and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study to test how popular AI models responded to specific prompts in the run-up to Election Day on Nov. 5, and rated the answers. More than half of the elections-related responses generated in Spanish contained incorrect information, as compared to 43% of responses in English, they found. Meta's model Llama 3, which has powered the AI assistant inside WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, was among those that fared the worst in the test, getting nearly two-thirds of all responses wrong in Spanish, compared to roughly half in English. For example, Meta's AI botched a response to a question about what it means if someone is a "federal only" voter. In Arizona, such voters did not provide the state with proof of citizenship -- generally because they registered with a form that didn't require it -- and are only eligible to vote in presidential and congressional elections. Meta's AI model, however, falsely responded by saying that "federal only" voters are people who live in U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico or Guam, who cannot vote in presidential elections. In response to the same question, Anthropic's Claude model directed the user to contact election authorities in "your country or region," like Mexico and Venezuela. Google's AI model Gemini also made mistakes. When it was asked to define the Electoral College, Gemini responded with a nonsensical answer about issues with "manipulating the vote." Meta spokesman Tracy Clayton said Llama 3 was meant to be used by developers to build other products, and added that Meta was training its models on safety and responsibility guidelines to lower the likelihood that they share inaccurate responses about voting. Anthropic's head of policy and enforcement, Alex Sanderford, said the company had made changes to better address Spanish-language queries that should redirect users to authoritative sources on voting-related issues. Google did not respond to requests for comment. Voting rights advocates have been warning for months that Spanish-speaking voters are facing an onslaught of misinformation from online sources and AI models. The new analysis provides further evidence that voters must be careful about where they get election information, said Lydia Guzman, who leads a voter advocacy campaign at Chicanos Por La Causa. "It's important for every voter to do proper research and not just at one entity, at several, to see together the right information and ask credible organizations for the right information," Guzman said. Trained on vast troves of material pulled from the internet, large language models provide AI-generated answers, but are still prone to producing illogical responses. Even if Spanish-speaking voters are not using chatbots, they might encounter AI models when using tools, apps or websites that rely on them. Such inaccuracies could have a greater impact in states with large Hispanic populations, such as Arizona, Nevada, Florida and California. Nearly one-third of all eligible voters in California, for example, are Latino, and one in five of Latino eligible voters only speak Spanish, the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute found. Rommell Lopez, a California paralegal, sees himself as an independent thinker who has multiple social media accounts and uses OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT. When trying to verify unfounded claims that immigrants ate pets, he said he encountered a bewildering number of different responses online, some AI-generated. In the end, he said he relied on his common sense. "We can trust technology, but not 100 percent," said Lopez, 46, of Los Angeles. "At the end of the day they're machines."

Voting rights groups worry AI models are generating inaccurate and misleading responses in Spanish

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- With just days before the presidential election, Latino voters are facing a barrage of targeted ads in Spanish and a new source of political messaging in the artificial intelligence age: chatbots generating unfounded claims in Spanish about voting rights. AI models are producing a stream of election-related falsehoods in Spanish more frequently than in English, muddying the quality of election-related information for one of the nation's fastest-growing and increasingly influential voting blocs, according to an analysis by two nonprofit newsrooms. Voting rights groups worry AI models may deepen information disparities for Spanish-speaking voters, who are being heavily courted by Democrats and Republicans up and down the ballot. Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a rally Thursday in Las Vegas featuring singer Jennifer Lopez and Mexican band Maná. Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, held an event Tuesday in a Hispanic region of Pennsylvania, just two days after fallout from insulting comments made by a speaker about Puerto Rico at a New York rally. The two organizations, Proof News and Factchequeado, collaborated with the Science, Technology and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study to test how popular AI models responded to specific prompts in the run-up to Election Day on Nov. 5, and rated the answers. More than half of the elections-related responses generated in Spanish contained incorrect information, as compared to 43% of responses in English, they found. Meta's model Llama 3, which has powered the AI assistant inside WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, was among those that fared the worst in the test, getting nearly two-thirds of all responses wrong in Spanish, compared to roughly half in English. For example, Meta's AI botched a response to a question about what it means if someone is a "federal only" voter. In Arizona, such voters did not provide the state with proof of citizenship -- generally because they registered with a form that didn't require it -- and are only eligible to vote in presidential and congressional elections. Meta's AI model, however, falsely responded by saying that "federal only" voters are people who live in U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico or Guam, who cannot vote in presidential elections. In response to the same question, Anthropic's Claude model directed the user to contact election authorities in "your country or region," like Mexico and Venezuela. Google's AI model Gemini also made mistakes. When it was asked to define the Electoral College, Gemini responded with a nonsensical answer about issues with "manipulating the vote." Meta spokesman Tracy Clayton said Llama 3 was meant to be used by developers to build other products, and added that Meta was training its models on safety and responsibility guidelines to lower the likelihood that they share inaccurate responses about voting. Anthropic's head of policy and enforcement, Alex Sanderford, said the company had made changes to better address Spanish-language queries that should redirect users to authoritative sources on voting-related issues. Google did not respond to requests for comment. Voting rights advocates have been warning for months that Spanish-speaking voters are facing an onslaught of misinformation from online sources and AI models. The new analysis provides further evidence that voters must be careful about where they get election information, said Lydia Guzman, who leads a voter advocacy campaign at Chicanos Por La Causa. "It's important for every voter to do proper research and not just at one entity, at several, to see together the right information and ask credible organizations for the right information," Guzman said. Trained on vast troves of material pulled from the internet, large language models provide AI-generated answers, but are still prone to producing illogical responses. Even if Spanish-speaking voters are not using chatbots, they might encounter AI models when using tools, apps or websites that rely on them. Such inaccuracies could have a greater impact in states with large Hispanic populations, such as Arizona, Nevada, Florida and California. Nearly one-third of all eligible voters in California, for example, are Latino, and one in five of Latino eligible voters only speak Spanish, the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute found. Rommell Lopez, a California paralegal, sees himself as an independent thinker who has multiple social media accounts and uses OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT. When trying to verify unfounded claims that immigrants ate pets, he said he encountered a bewildering number of different responses online, some AI-generated. In the end, he said he relied on his common sense. "We can trust technology, but not 100 percent," said Lopez, 46, of Los Angeles. "At the end of the day they're machines." ___ Salomon reported from Miami. Associated Press writer Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report. ___ This story is part of an Associated Press series, "The AI Campaign," exploring the influence of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election cycle. ___ The Associated Press receives financial assistance from the Omidyar Network to support coverage of artificial intelligence and its impact on society. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Voting Rights Groups Worry AI Models Are Generating Inaccurate and Misleading Responses in Spanish

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- With just days before the presidential election, Latino voters are facing a barrage of targeted ads in Spanish and a new source of political messaging in the artificial intelligence age: chatbots generating unfounded claims in Spanish about voting rights. AI models are producing a stream of election-related falsehoods in Spanish more frequently than in English, muddying the quality of election-related information for one of the nation's fastest-growing and increasingly influential voting blocs, according to an analysis by two nonprofit newsrooms. Voting rights groups worry AI models may deepen information disparities for Spanish-speaking voters, who are being heavily courted by Democrats and Republicans up and down the ballot. Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a rally Thursday in Las Vegas featuring singer Jennifer Lopez and Mexican band Maná. Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, held an event Tuesday in a Hispanic region of Pennsylvania, just two days after fallout from insulting comments made by a speaker about Puerto Rico at a New York rally. The two organizations, Proof News and Factchequeado, collaborated with the Science, Technology and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study to test how popular AI models responded to specific prompts in the run-up to Election Day on Nov. 5, and rated the answers. More than half of the elections-related responses generated in Spanish contained incorrect information, as compared to 43% of responses in English, they found. Meta's model Llama 3, which has powered the AI assistant inside WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, was among those that fared the worst in the test, getting nearly two-thirds of all responses wrong in Spanish, compared to roughly half in English. For example, Meta's AI botched a response to a question about what it means if someone is a "federal only" voter. In Arizona, such voters did not provide the state with proof of citizenship -- generally because they registered with a form that didn't require it -- and are only eligible to vote in presidential and congressional elections. Meta's AI model, however, falsely responded by saying that "federal only" voters are people who live in U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico or Guam, who cannot vote in presidential elections. In response to the same question, Anthropic's Claude model directed the user to contact election authorities in "your country or region," like Mexico and Venezuela. Google's AI model Gemini also made mistakes. When it was asked to define the Electoral College, Gemini responded with a nonsensical answer about issues with "manipulating the vote." Meta spokesman Tracy Clayton said Llama 3 was meant to be used by developers to build other products, and added that Meta was training its models on safety and responsibility guidelines to lower the likelihood that they share inaccurate responses about voting. Anthropic's head of policy and enforcement, Alex Sanderford, said the company had made changes to better address Spanish-language queries that should redirect users to authoritative sources on voting-related issues. Google did not respond to requests for comment. Voting rights advocates have been warning for months that Spanish-speaking voters are facing an onslaught of misinformation from online sources and AI models. The new analysis provides further evidence that voters must be careful about where they get election information, said Lydia Guzman, who leads a voter advocacy campaign at Chicanos Por La Causa. "It's important for every voter to do proper research and not just at one entity, at several, to see together the right information and ask credible organizations for the right information," Guzman said. Trained on vast troves of material pulled from the internet, large language models provide AI-generated answers, but are still prone to producing illogical responses. Even if Spanish-speaking voters are not using chatbots, they might encounter AI models when using tools, apps or websites that rely on them. Such inaccuracies could have a greater impact in states with large Hispanic populations, such as Arizona, Nevada, Florida and California. Nearly one-third of all eligible voters in California, for example, are Latino, and one in five of Latino eligible voters only speak Spanish, the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute found. Rommell Lopez, a California paralegal, sees himself as an independent thinker who has multiple social media accounts and uses OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT. When trying to verify unfounded claims that immigrants ate pets, he said he encountered a bewildering number of different responses online, some AI-generated. In the end, he said he relied on his common sense. "We can trust technology, but not 100 percent," said Lopez, 46, of Los Angeles. "At the end of the day they're machines." ___ Salomon reported from Miami. Associated Press writer Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report. ___ This story is part of an Associated Press series, "The AI Campaign," exploring the influence of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election cycle. ___ The Associated Press receives financial assistance from the Omidyar Network to support coverage of artificial intelligence and its impact on society. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Voting Rights Groups Warn About AI Generating Unfounded Claims in Spanish

Two voting rights groups have issued warnings this month about the possibility of artificial intelligence (AI) generating unfounded claims about the upcoming election in Spanish. With just days until the presidential election, Latino voters are seeing a surge of Spanish-language ads and a new wave of political content shaped by artificial intelligence: Chatbots spreading unverified claims in Spanish about voting rights. AI Concerns AI models are generating election-related misinformation in Spanish at a higher rate than in English, complicating the flow of reliable information for one of America's fastest-growing and increasingly influential voting blocs, according to an analysis by two nonprofit news organizations. Voting rights advocates warn that AI-driven misinformation could widen information gaps for Spanish-speaking voters, a crucial demographic targeted by both Democrats and Republicans in races across the ballot. Warnings About AI Misinformation Proof News and Factchequeado, in partnership with the Science, Technology and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study, evaluated popular AI models' responses to targeted prompts ahead of the November 5 election, assessing the accuracy of their outputs. The study found that over half of the election-related responses generated in Spanish contained inaccuracies, compared to 43 percent of responses in English. Voting rights advocates have warned for months about a surge of online and AI-driven misinformation targeting Spanish-speaking voters. The new analysis underscores the importance of verifying election information, said Lydia Guzman, who heads a voter advocacy initiative at Chicanos Por La Causa. "It's important for every voter to do proper research and not just at one entity, at several, to see together the right information and ask credible organizations for the right information," Guzman said to The Associated Press (AP). Large language models, trained on extensive datasets sourced from the internet, can generate AI-driven responses but remain prone to inaccuracies. Even if Spanish-speaking voters aren't directly interacting with chatbots, they may still encounter AI-generated content embedded in tools, apps or websites that rely on these models. These inaccuracies could carry significant impact in states with large Hispanic populations, including Arizona, Nevada, Florida and California. In California, nearly one-third of all eligible voters are Latino, and for one in five Latino voters, Spanish is their only language, according to the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute. The AI Models Meta's AI model Llama 3, which powers the virtual assistant in WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, performed poorly in the test with nearly two-thirds of its Spanish responses containing inaccuracies, compared to about half of its English responses. For instance, Meta's AI misinterpreted a question about "federal only" voters. In Arizona, these voters are those who registered without providing state-required proof of citizenship -- typically because they used a federal form that doesn't ask for it -- and are eligible only for presidential and congressional races. Instead, Meta's AI incorrectly stated that "federal only" voters are U.S. territory residents, such as those in Puerto Rico or Guam, who actually cannot vote in presidential elections. Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton told the AP that Llama 3 is designed as a tool for developers to create other products. He added that Meta is training its models with safety and responsibility guidelines to reduce the risk of inaccurate voting information being shared. This article includes reporting from The Associated Press. Related Articles