Artificial Intelligence

The Hon. J.S. LEE (Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:42): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Attorney-General about AI-generated electoral disinformation.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.S. LEE: On 20 May 2024, the Australian Electoral Commissioner, Tom Rogers, told the federal Senate Select Committee Inquiry into Adopting Artificial Intelligence that the commission does not have the tools or laws to tackle artificial disinformation online. AI-generated misinformation has been reported in recent election campaigns in the US, Indonesia, Pakistan and India, including deepfake videos pretending to deliver messages from candidates, and robocalls misleading voters about how to participate in elections.

While the Australian Electoral Commission expects that similar artificial disinformation will appear in the next federal election, the commissioner told the inquiry that:

The AEC does not possess the legislative tools or internal technical capability to deter, detect or then adequately deal with false AI-generated content concerning the election process, such as content that covers where to vote, how to cast a formal vote, and why the voting process may not be secure and trustworthy.

My questions to the Attorney-General are:

1. Does the Electoral Commission of South Australia have a strategy in place to deal with false AI-generated electoral content?

2. Can the Attorney-General outline what the state government would do to address AI-generated disinformation concerns in future state elections?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (14:44): I thank the honourable member for her question. They are important issues that the honourable member raises. I know that this is an area that has been tackled in a couple of jurisdictions, a couple of states in the US, in relation to regulating wholly artificially generated electoral content. As the honourable member points out, it has been an issue in recent elections, including the recently run and concluded election in India. I saw reports of people who had passed away six years ago actually purporting to have ads made for electoral candidates.

It certainly is something I am happy to inform the honourable member that we are actively considering in South Australia. The now Special Minister of State, the Hon. Dan Cregan, the member for Kavel, has carriage of the Electoral Act, but prior to that it sat with me as Attorney-General. It is certainly something we have been looking at.

There are already provisions within our electoral regime in South Australia that don't appear in the federal regime. I think section 113 of our South Australian Electoral Act covers misleading advertising. That is something that our Electoral Commissioner does, and has for some time, adjudicated on as part of electoral campaigns, the misleading advertising.

I would suspect there would be much that might be wholly artificially generated content that may well fall into the provisions that we already have in South Australia that are not replicated in federal legislation, but it is something we are keenly looking at given what seems to be the very rapid rise in, partly and in most cases, wholly artificially generated content that occurs in electoral campaigns.