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2 Delphi 66 (2019)
Artificial Intelligence and Democracy: The Impact of Disinformation, Social Bots and Political Targeting

handle is hein.journals/delphi2 and id is 82 raw text is: 66 | Artificial Intelligence and Democracy Artificial Intelligence and Democracy: The Impact of Disinformation, Social Bots and Political Targeting Maja Brkan* Free elections and democracy in Europe and globally can be detrimentally affected by a ma- licious use of new technologies, in particular artificial intelligence (AI). AI can be used as a tool to produce and spread disinformation orfacilitate psychographic micro-targeting of voters in the run-up to elections. At the same time, AI can effectively counter such uses of technology. This article discusses the ways in whichfreedom of elections and democracy can be impacted through the deployment ofAL 1. Introduction European and global democracies are under a se- vere threat due to extensive spread of disinforma- tion through social and traditional media. The use of automated accounts and bots, psychographic mi- cro-targeting, and deepfakes to proliferate fake news during elections are making the problem even more alarming. In addition, freedom of elec- tions in the EU and the European democracy can be detrimentally affected by the use of artificial in- telligence (AI) in other ways. For example, automat- ed social bots can be (mis)used to promote politi- cal candidates and convince the voters to vote for this candidate even if they do not spread disinfor mation, in particular if coupled with micro-target- ing. The increasing use of artificially intelligent tools can seriously threaten public values of democracy, rule of law, freedom of elections and prevention of manipulation of voters. Nevertheless, it is also cru- cial to balance these values against freedom of ex- pression, media freedom and media pluralism. EU institutions, governments, media outlets and civil so- ciety are deploying regulatory mechanisims to en- sure the balance between these public values. For ex- ample, numerous policy documents have been adopt- ed on the level of the EU to counter disinformation and in response to political advertising.2 This article aims to discuss the ways in which the use of Al can impact democracy and freedom of elections. More specifically, it discusses the potentially detrimental impact of the use of social bots, psychographic mi- cro-targeting, disinformation and voting advice ap- plications. II. The Use of Artificial Intelligence to Impact Democracy 1. Social Bots Social bots are automated or semi-automated social media accounts, primarily controlled by algorithms and programmed in a way to have the ability to in- teract with human social media users.3 They can au- tomatically generate and spread content, without re- DOI: 10.21552/delphi/2019/2/4 Associate Professor of EU Law, Faculty of Law, Maastricht Univer- sity, The Netherlands. For correspondence: <maja.brkan@maas- trichtuniversity.nl> 1 For EU efforts to counter disinformation, see for example Commu- nication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committe oftheRegions: Tackling online disinformation: a European approach, COM(201 8) 236 final; Joint Communication to the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Commit- tee of the Regions: Action Plan against Disinformation, JOIN(2018) 36 final; Commission Recommendation of 12.9.2018 on election cooperation networks, online transparency, protec- tion against cybersecurity incidents and fighting disinformation campaigns in the context of elections to the European Parliament, C(2018) 5949 final 2 European Parliament resolution of 25 October 2018 on the use of Facebook users' data by Cambridge Analytica and the impact on data protection (2018/2855(RSP)), points 7-8 3 Kai-Cheng Yang et al,'Arming thepublic with artificialintelli- gence to counter social bots' (2019) Human Behavior and Emerg- ing Technologies 48.; Naja Bentzen, 'Computational propaganda techniques' (2018) European Parliamentary Research Service <http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html ?reference=EPRSATA(2018)628284> accessed 5 April 2019; Philip N Howard, Samuel Woolley and Ryan Calo, 'Algorithms, Bots, and Political Communication in the US 2016 Election: The Challenge of Automated Political Communication for Election Law and Administration' (2018) 15 Journal of Information Tech- nology & Politics 2, 81-93 Delphi 2|2019

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