How AI could ‘supercharge’ election risks across south-east Asia

Some experts fear AI could be weaponised in south-east Asia, home to nations with predominately young and hyper-connected populations Years ago it would have been an elaborate operation involving an army of cyber troops creating fake news websites, social media accounts and forged dossiers, all deployed to spread disinformation en masse. In a worrying sign of how AI could “supercharge” fake news, Anthropic recently revealed how Claude AI was used in a political influence operation in Malaysia.

It created a commercial election manipulation platform, utilising a network of about 1,000 X accounts, a fake news outlet called “Malaysia Pulse” and a series of fabricated documents. The operation appeared designed to target voters in recent state elections, pulling in census and electoral data to exploit sensitive political and social fractures, including race, religion, and royalty across all 222 Malaysian parliamentary constituencies.

The experiment was ultimately ineffective once Anthropic stepped in but has sparked alarm about how AI could be weaponised in future elections in south-east Asia, a region already deeply vulnerable to fake news. Katie Harbath, who formerly worked on public…