INEC raises the alarm over AI disinformation ahead of 2027 elections

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has warned that the growing use of artificial intelligence to produce misleading political content could threaten the credibility of Nigeria’s 2027 general elections.

INEC Chairman, Prof. Joash Amupitan, SAN, said advances in generative AI had made it easier and cheaper to create convincing fake audio, videos and images capable of misleading voters.

Amupitan raised the concern on Wednesday in Abuja in a keynote address delivered on his behalf by National Commissioner Sani Adam, SAN, at the 13th Annual International Conference of the Association of Communication Scholars and Professionals of Nigeria.

The conference was themed, “Media, Technology and Elections in Africa: Navigating Digital Disruption and the New Dynamics of Electoral Communication.”

According to Amupitan, the integrity of an election now depends not only on the credibility of voting and result-management technologies but also on whether voters receive accurate information about the electoral process and trust it.

He said INEC’s deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing Portal was designed to improve transparency by enabling citizens to access polling-unit results before they are transmitted to collation centres.

However, he acknowledged that the experience of the 2023 general elections demonstrated how technological shortcomings could fuel public suspicion.

Amupitan said electoral technology must therefore be reliable, properly understood by voters and transparently explained whenever it fails to perform as expected.

As part of preparations for 2027, he disclosed that INEC was undertaking a comprehensive review of its technology infrastructure, including system redundancy, penetration testing and disaster recovery arrangements.

The commission is also considering a mock presidential election to assess its preparedness and test voter accreditation, result transmission and result-viewing processes under conditions that would simulate an actual election.

Beyond technical systems, Amupitan identified the manipulation of digital information as another major challenge facing the commission and voters.

He said AI-generated content could be deployed to spread fabricated political narratives, adding that similar forms of manipulated content had featured in recent elections across West and East Africa.

He also warned that the threat was not limited to fake content, as political actors could exploit algorithmic microtargeting to send tailored messages to specific groups of voters.

Such technology, he noted, could enable different segments of the electorate to receive conflicting political messages, making it harder for voters to distinguish genuine campaign communication from manipulation.

Amupitan consequently called for electoral technology and communication to be approached as interconnected areas, stressing that public confidence in elections would depend increasingly on both the performance of electoral systems and the quality of information reaching citizens.