Election campaigns in the era of misinformation

Nigeria's 2027 general election campaign is taking place in a complicated information environment in which Artificial Intelligence is changing how political messages are produced and distributed. The report notes that voters may encounter fabricated videos, cloned voices, manipulated photographs, fake newspaper pages and invented election results alongside genuine information. The Independent National Electoral Commission has acknowledged that the misuse of AI in creating and spreading manipulated content is no longer a distant or theoretical danger. The National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Mallam Mohammed Haruna, said AI and deepfake threats extend beyond fabricated content and could be deployed to produce highly targeted messages.

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