TSE rules for the use of Artificial Intelligence in the 2024 elections

electoral justice

Faced with Congress’s inertia in regulating the issue, the Electoral Court decided to establish guidelines for the use of AI in elections

The Superior Electoral Court (TSE) approved last Tuesday (27) the 12 electoral resolutions with the final rules for the October municipal election. The step is mandatory and must be completed by March 5th, in the year of the election.

Through these regulations, TSE ministers seek to adapt the electoral process to changes in reality, although always limited to what the electoral legislation and the Constitution provide.

With technological advances becoming increasingly rapid, this year issues that were not even on the radar were the focus of concern. One example is artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to boost problems that are already difficult to control, such as fake news and disinformation about the electoral process.

Given the inertia of Congress in regulating the issue, the Electoral Court decided to establish guidelines for the use of AI in electionsin order to try to protect the well-informed decision of the voter.

The measures were well received by the legal community, which saw the initiative as an attempt to adapt the slower time of creating standards to the accelerated speed of technological updates.

“It is a continuous race, where technology and manipulation methods evolve exponentially, so defense strategies must be equally dynamic”, highlights lawyer Alexander Coelho, specialist in digital law and data protection.

There are doubts about the effectiveness of the rules in the face of increasingly realistic manipulations, but the assessment is that, once there are rules, it becomes easier for other social actors to assist the Electoral Court in monitoring campaigns.

“Many cases will reach the courts through the lawyers of the candidates and parties”, says professor and lawyer Renato Ribeiro de Almeida, academic coordinator of the Brazilian Association of Electoral and Political Law (Abradep). “We will certainly have very judicialized elections, following the trend of previous elections”, he adds.

Check below the rules approved by the TSE on the use of artificial intelligence in elections:

• Requirement of identification labels for manufactured multimedia content – ​​any visual material made using artificial intelligence must carry explicit warning about the use of the technology;
• Restriction on the use of chatbots and avatars to mediate campaign communication – it is prohibited to simulate conversations with the candidate or another avatar that appears to be a real person;
• Absolute prohibition, whether for or against the candidate, of the use of deep fake – content manufactured in audio, video format or a combination of both and that has been digitally generated or manipulated to create, replace or alter the image or voice of a living, deceased or fictitious person;
• At the same time, internet application providers (social networks and messaging applications, for example) are obliged to remove from the air, without the need for a court order, accounts and materials that promote undemocratic conduct and acts and also hate speech, such as racism. , homophobia, fascism and any type of prejudice.

*With information from Agência Brasil

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