OpenAI and Anthropic will establish dedicated war rooms for the first time to help ensure their platforms provide accurate information during the U.S. midterm elections. According to ChainCatcher, Semafor reported that Anthropic’s teams have been strengthening election-related safeguards and enforcing platform policies throughout the year; a dedicated team formed ahead of the election will monitor platform misuse and prepare to respond quickly to incidents.
Technology companies began setting up election war rooms in 2018, when Meta created one to address the spread of election misinformation. Risks now also include deepfake videos and misinformation spread through AI search tools. Last week, Google’s AI Mode did not answer a question about who won the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and Google said it was working to fix the issue.
Unpredictable AI outputs, recent cybersecurity issues, and AI search tools’ tendency to tailor answers to users’ expectations make monitoring and response more difficult. Katie Harbath, Meta’s former head of public policy, said war rooms allow teams to quickly assess and prioritize unexpected problems using established procedures.