The voice on the line sounded like the President of the United States. It carried his cadence, his gravel, even his familiar pauses. But the words were strange. “Save your vote for the November ballot,” it told thousands of citizens in New Hampshire ahead of the 2024 primary. In reality, the call was orchestrated by a registered Democrat political consultant, Steve Kramer, who later admitted he had paid just $500 to deploy an AI-cloned “Biden” voice as a stunt to “raise awareness” about the dangers of artificial intelligence in campaigns. The irony was present. What Kramer presented as a warning about AI’s potential became, in practice, the very kind of voter-suppressive misinformation he claimed to oppose. Months later, another machine – this time Elon Musk’s “anti-woke” chatbot Grok– confidently declared that Kamala Harris had already missed ballot deadlines in nine states, a claim that would have disqualified her candidacy if it were true. Both statements were fabrications, generated not by shadowy propagandists in a back room, but by artificial intelligence systems lionized as the future of knowledge.
These events capture the unease now circulating at the heart of Western democracy: what happens when machines, built to mimic authority, become indistinguishable from it? Artificial intelligence is no longer just a technical curiosity anymore, instead it has become a political actor. By producing misinformation at scale, eroding trust in institutions, and destabilizing how citizens encounter truth, AI poses a structural threat to democratic life. Political figures, election officials, and scholars alike warn that the speed and scale of AI’s intrusion into electoral processes is unlike anything democracies have faced before. The weaponization of AI for disinformation and voter suppression and the erosion of trust in political discourse as platforms amplify bias and distortion under the guise of neutrality. Alongside these, it considers the looming risks of AI-driven surveillance, which threaten to impact democratic participation.
Artificial intelligence has entered American political life at a moment of unprecedented ideological divide. The United States today is not simply polarized in the sense of having two strong parties- it is polarized in a deeper, structural way. Data shows that moderates are now at historic lows, with Democrats moving steadily toward liberal identification and Republicans toward conservatism. What was once a contest of overlapping coalitions has inured in a clash of political identities that increasingly define themselves against one another. This context matters because misinformation, including the kind generated by AI, does not fall onto a neutral political climate. It enters a society that is already primed to interpret facts through partisan filters, already conditioned to distrust the other side, and already doubtful that neutral arbiters even exist.
In this polarized environment, AI-powered disinformation becomes an accelerant. The Biden robocall in New Hampshire supports the point. True, the deception was crude and quickly exposed, but that misses the deeper damage. For voters who already believed elites cannot be trusted, the call confirmed their suspicion. For others, the very existence of such a tactic became evidence that elections are already compromised. AI misinformation works not because it convinces everyone of the same falsehood, but because it confirms each side’s worst assumption about the other.
What is at stake is more than misinformation. Elections require what political theorists call procedural certainty which is the assurance that rules are clear, public, and binding on all participants. When AI-generated “facts” tell voters that deadlines have passed when they have not, or that candidates are ineligible when they are not, it attacks this procedural core. When citizens, already skeptical of institutions, begin to assume that every piece of information could be made-up, the state’s ability to act as a neutral arbiter decreases. Just Security has warned that while 2024 did not see a catastrophic “deepfake election,” the slow increase of such distortions accumulates into a crisis of becoming a real concern. The danger here is not a single spectacular deception but a steady erosion of trust until nothing can be taken as given.
A democracy can survive heated disagreement, maybe even extreme partisanship, as long as citizens trust the process by which disputes are adjudicated. But if AI bots make that process itself appear rigged or unknowable, then polarization is no longer contained within the democratic game, as it threatens the game itself. In earlier periods, voter suppression relied on legal barriers like literacy tests or poll taxes. Today, it relies on synthetic media that tells people they cannot vote, or that their vote will not count. The forms differ, but the function is the same by limiting access, undermining confidence, and hollowing out the capacity of citizens to act together.
AI does not just spread lies in a polarized culture but that it feeds on polarization, and polarization feeds on it in return. This mutual reinforcement means that AI disinformation is not only a byproduct of technology, nor a symptom of partisanship, but a structural threat to democracy itself. The danger is not that Americans will all be fooled by the same falsehood, but that they will cease to believe that any truth can be shared across their political divide. For Canadians, the lesson from our neighbours down south is clear: staying vigilant and informed about the evolving capabilities of AI is imperative, as Canadian security experts themselves warn that deepfakes and synthetic media pose a real and growing threat to the integrity of our own democratic future. This warning carries weight, as polarization in Canadian society has also been noted to be on the rise, making us far from immune to the corrosive effects of AI disinformation in the political landscape.
Any views or opinions expressed in articles are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the NATO Association of Canada.
Photo retrieved from abcNEWS.
