The EU’s artificial intelligence act came into force on Sunday (2 August), while new research reveals how AI is eroding citizen engagement in democracy.
In a paper published on Monday (3 August) in Perspectives on Politics, researchers from the London School of Economics (LSE) found that the effects of AI on our understandings of politics go far beyond misinformation and deepfakes.
The study found that when users generate political content through an AI chatbot, it becomes harder to identify whether the political opinion is their own.
Using an AI chatbot to understand a policy or electoral candidates means its active involvement in how citizens interpret the issue in the first place.
The EU has kept a wary stance on AI due to algorithmic bias in its back-end, promoting political actors favourable to those running the chatbots.
