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Meta says it has taken down about 20 covert influence operations in 2024

Firm names Russia as top source of such activity but says it is ‘striking’ how little AI was used to try to trick voters

Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at the company that runs Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said Russia was still the No 1 source of the adversarial online activity but said in a briefing it was “striking” how little AI was used to try to trick voters in the busiest ever year for elections around the world. The former British deputy prime minister revealed that Meta, which has more than 3 billion users, had to take down just over 500,000 requests to generate images on its own AI tools of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, JD Vance and Joe Biden in the month leading up to US election day. Meta’s assessment follows conclusions last month from the Centre for Emerging Technology and Security that “deceptive AI-generated content did shape US election discourse by amplifying other forms of disinformation and inflaming political debates”.

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