Generative AI, Emerging Technology, and Political Communication

Numerous technological advancements are being made in the field of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) as it relates to political campaigning and communication over social media. GenAI has been used for political endorsement and for translating candidates’ speeches into multiple languages so that their ideas can reach varied groups. However, informed policy and critical thought—guided by ethical guidelines and empirical methods for studying GenAI’s political use—are lagging behind rapidly developing techno-political applications. Leveraging original qualitative research, we draw on examples of documented ‘harms’ of GenAI and deepfake usage in digital politics—including via computational propaganda and coordinated disinformation campaigns—in the global super-election-year of 2024 to hypothesize how researchers can help understand (and potentially alleviate) these challenges. We touch on methodological obstacles facing internet researchers today as they work to study political information and groups on social media. Specifically, we outline the challenges that GenAI poses (with the increasing proliferation of deepfake images, audio, and video) for scholars trying to understand and explore ‘truth’ as it relates to online cultures and communities. Researchers have found that platform users often ‘perform’ aspirational, idealistic identities for ‘invisible audiences’ on platforms. GenAI further complicates notions of authenticity, identity, and performance. We ask how researchers studying online communities and problems like democratic backsliding can make sense of ‘authentic’ experiences and interactions given the growing presence of GenAI-driven content online, and we end with a discussion of attendant challenges to democracy and elections.