Open Letter calling for UK political parties to safeguard election integrity in era of AI

In a year where globally more voters will head to the polls than ever before, democracy is facing a new and largely untested threat from AI-generated content and deepfakes.

Political parties are by no means powerless on this issue and can play a role in protecting election integrity in the run up to the UK election. With this in mind, alongside key partners, we have issued an Open Letter calling on all UK political parties to form a cross-party agreement on their responsible use of generative AI ahead of the election.

And the UK public supports this effort. New, nationally representative polling, commissioned by Demos, shows that over 60% of the public are concerned about the impact of generative-AI at the general election and by a margin of two to one would support parties agreeing guidelines on using it responsibly.

The open letter is backed by trusted organisations such as Full Fact and the Electoral Reform Society, leading universities, and key figures including Martin Lewis, Founder and Chair of Money Saving Expert and the Money and Mental Policy Institute (MMHPI), and Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales. It calls on UK political parties to commit to four steps:

1. Not using generative AI tools to produce materially misleading audio or visual content that might convince voters into believing something is true when it is not;
2. Clearly labelling where generative AI is used to produce audio or visual content in a non-trivial way;
3. Not amplifying materially misleading AI-generated content and, where appropriate and a significant risk, to be a responsible actor in calling this out in such a way that does not contribute toward further amplifying this content;
4. Ensuring that party staff, members, volunteers and supporters are given clear guidelines for the use of generative AI in election campaigning.

While there is undoubtedly much more to do on this issue in the longer term, in these divisive times, when public trust in our politicians is so low, we hope that the political parties will work together to help protect our election integrity.

Read the full text of the Open Letter here.

Read our new Briefing Paper Generative AI and Democracy: Impacts and Interventions, which takes a deeper look at near and long-term solutions for safeguarding our electoral integrity in the face of AI advancements.

Deltapoll interviewed 1,944 British adults online between 12th and 15th April 2024. The data have been weighted to be representative of the British adult population as a whole.

This campaign was partially funded by Google DeepMind.