Election misinformation is a problem in any language. But some gets more attention than others

WASHINGTON — Warnings about deepfakes and disinformation fueled by artificial intelligence. But for languages like Spanish, or in dozens of nations where English isn’t the dominant language, there are even fewer safeguards in place to protect voters and democracy against the corrosive effects of election misinformation. Recent changes at tech firms — content moderator layoffs and decisions to rollback some misinformation policies — have only compounded the situation, even as new technologies like artificial intelligence make it easier than ever to craft lifelike audio and video that can fool voters. “If there’s a significant population that speaks another language, you can bet there’s going to be disinformation targeting them,” said Randy Abreu, an attorney at the U.S.-based National Hispanic Media Council, which created the Spanish Language Disinformation Coalition to track and identify disinformation targeting Latino voters in the U.S. “The power of artificial intelligence is now making this an even more frightening reality.” Many of the big tech companies regularly tout their efforts to safeguard elections, and not just in the U.S. and E.U. A lack of significant steps by tech companies has forced groups that advocate for voters and free elections to band together, said Ritu Kapur, co-founder and managing director of The Quint, an online publication that recently joined with several other outlets and Google to create a new fact-checking effort known as Shakti.