Polls got a bad rap after the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections because they were so far off the actual results. So what happened? And which polls should we look at for this election?
Author: Sissel McCarthy
Meet yet another AI chatbot called Grok. Grok is Elon Musk’s version of ChatGPT with one big difference: access to real-time information on the social media platform X. This means Grok can respond to prompts about current events or viral posts.
Here’s another unique feature: Grok answers questions with “a bit of wit and a rebellious streak” according to the X AI team. It can also respond to “spicy questions” other AI bots reject.
It is high season for election interference, with multiple foreign actors trying to influence American voters with all kinds of misleading content. While this kind of disinformation is not a new phenomenon, intelligence experts say it is an “unprecedented threat in 2024 and that the US is less ready than ever,” according to NBC News.
Sora is the latest AI-powered tool from OpenAI, so new that it’s only available to a few select researchers, academics and visual artists. This software generates highly realistic videos from short snippets of text, like “historical footage of California in the gold rush.” After typing in that description, presto! Sora generates a high-resolution video in a fraction of the time it would take a digital artist to create it and way faster than actually filming that scene on-site with actors, props, lighting and cameras.
This is not a hypothetical question or distant possibility; AI-generated content is already influencing voters. Although many state and federal lawmakers are scrambling to safeguard the upcoming election, a growing number of experts are sounding the alarm, warning that the U.S. is woefully unprepared for the growing threat from AI-generated propaganda and disinformation. In the 14 months since ChatGPT’s debut, this new AI technology is flooding the internet with lies, reshaping the political landscape and even challenging our concept of reality.
You may be surprised to learn that news organizations like The Associated Press, have been using some form of artificial intelligence since 2014.
The jury is still out on this question in the long term, but for now, most experts say chatbots will contribute to the spread of misinformation. Just for fun, I asked ChatGPT what it knew about me—and its response was startling.
Press freedom is under attack, and not just recently. It has been on a steady decline for the last decade, according to the World Press Freedom Index, which ranks 180 countries every year.
It feels like a new conspiracy theory is popping up every day. Just look at the social media posts after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed during the game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Doctors say the sudden hit to his chest caused a cardiac arrest, but within minutes, vaccine skeptics blamed the COVID-19 vaccine.
We’ve all heard the saying, “There are two sides to every story.” And sometimes, that’s true in journalism–and life. But balance is not an element of journalism and certainly not its goal. While reporters investigate both—or many—points of view to arrive at what Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel call “the most complete understanding of the facts,” giving equal time to both sides may not always be fair to the truth.
