The Visayas and Mindanao are currently being flooded with the tarpaulins of two prominent politicians who are obviously eyeing Senate seats in next year’s midterms.

Who the two are isn’t important. We aren’t alarmed but merely amused by the duo’s firm belief in the ancient electoral tactic of “name recall” through vanity posters.

Those vanity posters, too, maybe the least of our problems in the technology-driven elections of our digital era.

In fact, we’re now on the cusp of an election that’s being organized amid an epidemic of misinformation and disinformation done through sophisticated technological advances.

Not only us. Sophisticated misinformation and disinformation to hijack an election is a raging worldwide issue, especially since more than 50 countries are holding elections this year.

As such, we’re now faced with a crucial election question months away from the 2025 midterms: Is the Philippines prepared for the big challenges of artificial intelligence (AI), disinformation, and outright hacking in an election?

Sadly, when such a question is raised, it’s met with dumbfounded silence.

In fact, as far as I can tell, no one concerned with preserving democratic elections here is discussing the grave challenges posed by AI, disinformation, and cyberattacks during an election.

No one is calling for a summit of election experts, computer experts, legal experts, social scientists, psychologists, political parties, internet platforms, law enforcement, and mass media to urgently address the issue as South Korea recently did.

The challenges posed are indeed grave and enormous.

Take, for instance, AI, which is about to upend everything, including elections.

The Associated Press (AP) reports that AI “is supercharging the threat of election disinformation worldwide, making it easy for anyone with a smartphone and a devious imagination to create fake — but convincing — content aimed at fooling voters.”

“It marks a quantum leap from a few years ago when creating phony photos, videos, or audio clips required teams of people with time, technical skills, and money. Now, using free and low-cost generative artificial intelligence services from companies like Google and OpenAI, anyone can create high-quality ‘deepfakes’ with a simple text prompt.”

As such, AP reports, “People wanting to influence elections no longer need to ‘handcraft artisanal election disinformation,’ said Chester Wisniewski, a cybersecurity expert.” It’s now so easy. 

Consequently, malignant domestic and foreign bad actors are salivating and drooling over generative AI.

Bad actors using AI in an election is a growing worldwide threat, say election experts.

In our particular case, the threat from domestic bad actors is compounded by preying foreign bad actors. Bad actors based in China will likely try to influence the forthcoming elections, all in the service of China’s expansionist agenda in the South China Sea.

Moreover, bad actors are inherently devious. Bad actors “often flout or skirt around government regulations and limitations put in place by (internet) platforms,” pointed out a news report.

Experts also say governments and internet platforms are not yet capable of stopping the disinformation deluge, nor are they moving fast enough to solve the problem.

The novelty and sophistication of AI technology, of course, makes it hard to track down who are behind AI-inspired misinformation or disinformation.

But this shouldn’t prevent us from defending ourselves, even if we lack the expertise.

We need only to keep abreast of the new tools against misinformation or disinformation that go beyond fact-checking or debunking false claims.

Psychologists say one new proven way to prevent misinformation from forming in the first place is by inoculating ourselves by “prebunking.”

“Prebunking,” says a psychology paper, is an “intervention designed to inoculate people against misinformation they might encounter in the future. Just as vaccines use weakened pathogens to stimulate the immune system to fight against viruses, prebunking exposes people to weakened versions of persuasive arguments to build their resistance to manipulation and misinformation.”

Simply put, “prebunking” is a proven method for gaining mass “mental immunity.”