Elections and Media

Donald Trump recently gave his most extensive public comments to date on artificial intelligence. “It is a superpower, and you want to be right at the beginning of it, but it is very disconcerting." Trump also mentions receiving $12 million for his campaign from unnamed Bay Area “super-geniuses,” a subtle marker of his emergence as the standard-bearer of the right-leaning, crypto-loving wing of Silicon Valley. Given how often Trump flip-flops, it’s worth focusing on what’s most consistent about his relationship with Silicon Valley: His status as a walking embodiment of the “move fast and br

On behalf of Free Press, the African American Research Collaborative (AARC) and BSP Research (BSP) completed a survey of 3,000 American adults to better understand how Americans use media and technology to gain information, how they deal with misinformation and safety online, what privacy concerns they have about online platforms, what they believe are appropriate roles in content moderation, and whether they perceive a need for more independent news sources in the current media and political environment. Key findings included:

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel shared with her colleagues a new agency proposal that, if adopted, would look into whether the agency should require disclosure when there is AI-generated content in political ads on radio and TV. With the circulation of this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and the subsequent support of her colleagues, the FCC would initiate a proceeding that recognizes consumers’ right to know when AI tools are being used in the political ads they view. If adopted, this proposal aims to increase transparency by:

Seventy-eight percent of American adults expect abuses of artificial intelligence systems (AIs) that will affect the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, according to a new national survey by the Elon Poll and the Imagining the Digital Future Center at Elon University. The survey finds:

Press freedom around the world is being threatened by the very people who should be its guarantors—political authorities. This is clear from the latest annual World Press Freedom Index produced by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Microsoft and OpenAI launched a $2 million Societal Resilience Fund to further artificial intelligence education and literacy among voters and vulnerable communities. Grants delivered from the fund will help several organizations—including Older Adults Technology Services from AARP (OATS), the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) and Partnership on AI (PAI)—to deliver AI education and support their work to create better understanding of AI capabilities.

Politicians often engage in hyperbole to make a point.

County Health Rankings & Roadmaps' (CHR&R) 2024 National Findings Report highlights the importance of civic infrastructure and spaces to connect and be informed, with a focus on access to local news, broadband internet and public libraries. CHR&R calls attention to structural barriers like policies, laws and practices that can create obstacles to forms of participation such as voting and worker unionizing. Key findings include:

A coalition of more than 200 civil-society organizations, researchers and journalists sent a letter to the top executives of the leading social-media platforms that calls on them to strengthen platform-integrity efforts to protect democratic elections worldwide in 2024. 

It’s been more than a year since ChatGPT’s public debut set the tech world abuzz. And Americans’ use of the chatbot is ticking up: 23 percent of US adults say they have ever used it, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in February 2024, up from 18 percent in July 2023. The February survey also asked Americans about several ways they might use ChatGPT, including for workplace tasks, for learning and for fun.