Both OpenAI and Anthropic will have “war rooms” dedicated to ensuring their platforms provide accurate information about the midterm elections, a first for both companies.
The concept of a tech platform “war room” dates back to 2018, when Meta stood one up for the first time amid concerns about the proliferation of election-related misinformation. The AI age has supercharged those threats, which now include deepfake videos and AI-powered search results spreading incorrect information.
Case in point: Last week, Google’s AI Mode wouldn’t respond to a query about who won the 2020 election, which the company said they were working to fix.
“Teams across the company work year-round on strengthening our election-related safeguards and enforcing our policies. Ahead of the election, we have a dedicated war room monitoring our platform for misuse and ready to quickly respond to any incidents,” an Anthropic spokesperson told Semafor.
These efforts will be made more difficult by AI’s unpredictable nature, recent cybersecurity issues, and the tendency of AI search tools to reflect back results users want to see.
Former Meta director of public policy Katie Harbath told Semafor that war rooms are “built for dealing with the things we can’t necessarily predict going wrong and you need a quick, established process in terms of triaging.”
