AI assistants are proving to be “inaccurate and evidently prejudiced” when providing election recommendations, the Dutch data protection authority (AP) has stated, raising alarms about a potential threat to democratic processes just eight days before national elections.
Testing Reveals Repeated Partiality in Chatbot Recommendations
The quartet of AI assistants tested by the authority “often end up with the same two parties”, regardless of the voter’s inquiry or input, the regulator noted in a analysis published ahead of the late October vote.
In more than half of the cases, the chatbot suggested either the right-wing PVV of the politician Geert Wilders or the leftwing GroenLinks-PvdA headed by the former European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans.
Certain groups, such as the centre-right CDA, “are rarely ever cited”, even when the voter’s query precisely aligns with the positions of these parties, the study indicated.
Authority Figure Cautions Against Using AI Chatbots for Election Advice
The vice-chair of the data protection agency, Monique Verdier, commented that while chatbots may seem like clever tools, “for election guidance, they repeatedly fall short”. Voters were being pushed toward a political group that might not correspond to their political views, she added.
“This directly impacts a cornerstone of democracy: the honesty of open and just votes,” said Verdier. “We therefore warn against employing AI assistants for voting advice, as their functioning is opaque and hard to confirm.”
Voting Background and Party Dynamics
Netherlands citizens vote on October 29 in an election that will be keenly observed around Europe for the performance of the PVV.
The far-right party of Wilders is ahead in surveys but the lead over the left-wing and centre-right parties seems to be closing, with many voters yet to make up their minds.
Every significant political faction have rejected a coalition with the Freedom party, meaning the party that comes second is most likely to supply the future head of government.
Unintentional Bias Attributed to Chatbot Functioning
The authority stressed that the bots were not deliberately biased, and that their “identified shortcomings” are a result of the way AI chatbots operate.
