This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: On Oct. 25, 2024, 10 days before the election that would return Republican Donald Trump to the White House and more than three months after Kamala Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket, ChatGPT was still telling users that Joe Biden was running for a second term as president. The "careless failure with profound democratic implications" is outlined in a recent study co-authored by a University of Massachusetts Amherst journalism scholar.
It details how the generative AI model served up false information in the run-up to the high-stakes election. Less than two weeks before Election Day 2024, the study found that nearly 10% of election-related claims by ChatGPT were inaccurate. The model also used "hedging," "omission" and, to abbreviate a term used by the authors, "B.S." to obscure political realities.
The research is published in the journal Information, Communication & Society. Paper co-author Heesoo Jang, assistant professor of media law and ethics at UMass Amherst, says that although ChatGPT may be able to ace tests and analyze large datasets, it was never designed to uphold democratic institutions—a role that the framers of the Constitution recognized as essential when they enshrined a free press. "We should be concerned and alarmed by the fact that while ChatGPT is nailing exams, it is also failing in these areas that it wasn't designed for," she says.
"ChatGPT is commercially driven. It isn't designed in a way that centers democracy." To test the model's grasp of the 2024 election, Jang and researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill) fed it prompts framed in partisan and nonpartisan ways. The prompts covered election information, disinformation and threats, candidates, and Project 2025.
They took steps, including starting new "chats" and using "incognito" web browsing, to ensure previous prompts did not influence later responses. The researchers audited ChatGPT-4o mini, which was the default free version of ChatGPT available to users during the study period. Of 592 verifiable claims it made on Oct. 25, 2024, 9.6% were inaccurate.
In addition to claiming Biden was still in the race, ChatGPT inaccurately stated that North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper was seeking reelection, even though he was term-limited. The study also shows the AI model hedged 18% of the time by returning answers with qualifying phrases like "could potentially," "generally aligned" and "typically." In other instances, it omitted critical information about efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
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