Dutch privacy watchdog warns voters against asking AI how to vote

Body finds that chatbots supply biased advice, including by starring voters to the hard-right Party for Freedom.

The Netherlands’s information extortion watchdog has cautioned citizens against consulting with artificial quality connected however to vote, informing that fashionable chatbots supply a “highly distorted and polarised view” of politics.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority said connected Tuesday that an expanding fig of voters were utilizing AI to assistance determine who to ballot for, contempt the models offering “unreliable and intelligibly biased” advice.

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The watchdog issued the informing arsenic it released the results of tests conducted connected 4 fashionable chatbots – ChatGPT, Gemini, Mistral, and Grok – successful the run-up to parliamentary elections connected October 29.

The probe recovered that the chatbots much often recommended parties connected the fringes of the governmental spectrum erstwhile asked to place the 3 choices that champion matched the argumentation preferences of 1,500 fictitious elector profiles.

In much than fractional of cases, the AI models identified the hard-right Party for Freedom (PVV) oregon left-wing Green Left-Labour Party arsenic the apical choice, the watchdog said.

Parties person to the governmental mediate crushed – specified arsenic the right-leaning People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy and the centre-left Democrats 66 – were recommended overmuch little often, according to the watchdog.

Meanwhile, immoderate groupings, including the blimpish Christian Democratic Appeal and left-leaning Denk, were “almost ne'er suggested”.

Monique Verdier, lawman seat of the authority, said that voters who turned to AI risked being encouraged to ballot for parties that bash not align with their preferences.

“This straight impacts a cornerstone of democracy: the integrity of escaped and just elections. We truthful impulse voters not to usage AI chatbots for voting proposal due to the fact that their cognition is neither transparent nor verifiable,” Verdier said successful a statement.

“Additionally, we telephone connected chatbot providers to forestall their systems from being utilized arsenic voting guides.”

The October 29 predetermination comes aft the PVV, led by anti-immigration firebrand Geert Wilders, pulled its enactment for the authorities aft its conjugation partners refused to backmost a 10-point program to radically curtail immigration.

Wilders’s PPV, which scored 1 of the biggest upsets successful Dutch governmental past by winning the astir seats successful the 2023 election, has consistently led sentiment polls earlier adjacent week’s vote.

While the PPV is connected way to triumph the astir seats for a 2nd consecutive election, it is each but definite to autumn acold abbreviated of a parliamentary majority.

The different large parties successful the Netherlands, which has been governed by conjugation governments without interruption since the 1940s, person each ruled retired supporting the PPV successful power.