Meta says AI had only ‘modest’ impact on global elections in 2024

The Facebook and Instagram owner says its defences were able to prevent AI-driven misinformation operations from gaining an online foothold.

Despite fears that artificial intelligence (AI) could influence the outcome of elections around the world, the United States technology giant Meta said it detected little impact across its platforms this year.

That was in part due to defensive measures designed to prevent coordinated networks of accounts, or bots, from grabbing attention on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg told reporters on Tuesday.

“I don’t think the use of generative AI was a particularly effective tool for them to evade our trip wires,” Clegg said of actors behind coordinated disinformation campaigns.

In 2024, Meta says it ran several election operations centres around the world to monitor content issues, including during elections in the US, Bangladesh, Brazil, France, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the European Union.

Most of the covert influence operations it has disrupted in recent years were carried out by actors from Russia, Iran and China, Clegg said, adding that Meta took down about 20 “covert influence operations” on its platform this year.

Russia was the number one source of those operations, with 39 networks disrupted in total since 2017, followed by Iran with 31, and China with 11.

Overall, the volume of AI-generated misinformation was low and Meta was able to quickly label or remove the content, Clegg said.

That was despite 2024 being the biggest election year ever, with some 2 billion people estimated to have gone to the polls around the world, he noted.

“People were understandably concerned about the potential