Artificial intelligence in Mexico’s 2024 elections: challenges and opportunities

Editorial introduction: This week, ahead of Mexico’s federal elections next Sunday, 2 June, we welcome a special contribution from Mexican journalist Ray Acosta, who has written the newsletter’s main article. Drawing on his extensive experience in radio and podcasts, he has also recorded it as audio, which we recommend listening to.

English edition note: this is a translation of Ray Acosta’s opinion article published on 29 May 2024, preserving its historical claims and the author’s assessments. Quotations are translated from the Spanish source; no original English wording has been independently checked. The preserved source contains no playable audio.

Let us recall the night of 1 July 2018, when, at around 11 pm, after the INE — Mexico’s National Electoral Institute — confirmed the election winner, Andrés Manuel López Obrador addressed the country for the first time as Mexico’s presumptive president. His first words after victory were full of emotion, notably when he thanked “blessed social media”. From his perspective, these new communication channels had been fundamental to connecting with his voters and winning by a margin of more than 30% over his opponents, something unprecedented in the country’s modern elections.

So far, everything seemed to be going well, but… when the stories went viral about envelopes of money that the president’s brother, Pío López Obrador, had illegally received from David León; the conflict-of-interest scandal surrounding the Casa Gris, or “Grey House”, in Houston that involved his son; and ProPublica’s report on the Mexican president’s failed security strategy, López Obrador changed his mind. Initially, he claimed to have won organically, without help from bots, thanks to “blessed social media”. Now that those same networks had exposed these abuses, however, he maintained that the criticism came from bots controlled by his enemies. According to him, only his followers are genuine, as he has repeated on several occasions at his press conferences known as “La Mañanera”, the morning briefing.

Here we have an ironic case of two sides of the same coin. It forces us to ask several questions: how influential is social media? Can it change the course of elections? How does artificial intelligence technology influence our digital lives and elections? And, perhaps most importantly, do large corporations manipulate us through social media using AI? We will try to answer some of these questions, or at least provide useful information to help do so. The only thing I can guarantee is that, after reading this text, your perception of AI will change forever.

The challenges¶

Let us start with what I consider the most important question: do large corporations manipulate us through social media using AI? The answer is yes. Simple. Harsh. Terrifying. How did they do it? Because, believe it or not, this has already happened; it is part of our reality. Through cookies and algorithms, AI has sufficient tools to manipulate the information we receive, and when and how we receive it, achieving corporate America’s objective: isolating us as a society.

For example, if you are a fan of Barcelona football club and search for it on Google, information about the club will “magically” begin appearing across all your social networks and mobile devices, presented as innocent recommendations. And it does not end there: when you accept the terms and conditions for using the software on your phone or computer, you allow your camera, microphone and location to be shared to “improve your experience”. This represents many petabytes of information that will, of course, be used against us. Worse still, Google, Facebook and Amazon reserve the right to sell the data collected about your habits: what do you do first in the morning — open YouTube or WhatsApp? What do you buy on Amazon, on what day and at what time? A serious question: have they paid you royalties from these sales worth many millions?

This technology is used on social media, and in 2024 the votes of millions of people in 60 countries will be subject to more pressure or interference than ever in electoral history. In Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and Israel’s offensive against Gaza, Palestine, false and biased AI-generated information is circulating, altering global perceptions of both conflicts (Inteligencia artificial: ciber-colonización o soberanía tecnológica — “Artificial intelligence: cyber-colonisation or technological sovereignty”, Nydia Egremy, Buzos de la Noticia, 2024).

Are you reading a fragment of the apocalyptic future described in George Orwell’s novel 1984? No. It is worse: it is the reality we are living through. In politics, Cambridge Analytica obtained the data Facebook collected through its platform and the site’s cookies, which there is no way to refuse without being forced to accept. They segmented US voters to send them personalised messages based on their psychological profile and electoral preference. In this way, they encouraged fear among voters in the centre and south of the country, and although polls favoured Hillary Clinton to win the presidency, Donald Trump won, as we know. But the manipulation does not end there. In another scandalous and controversial case, Cambridge Analytica also participated in the election won by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, conducting a smear campaign against the pro-Russian government (Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, The Great Hack, Netflix, 2019).

Looking at Mexico, according to data from Asociación de Internet.MX, there are 101.9 million internet users in the country, of whom 98% are active on social media, with WhatsApp the most used platform. Mexican internet users are connected to their feeds for nine hours or more a day. The five most-used social networks, by number of users, are WhatsApp, 96%; Facebook, 98%; Instagram, 81%; YouTube, 62%; and TikTok, 62%. Internet use in Mexico is balanced across generations: Baby Boomers, 24%; Generation X, 23%; Generation Z, 22%; and Millennials, 19% (Internet.MX, 2024).

Mexico is connected, that is true, but we lack political literacy. In my opinion, AI is being used by Mexico’s government and its advisers to discourage people from voting, promoting the narrative that Claudia Sheinbaum, the governing party’s candidate, “has already won” and that there is no way to reverse the trend because “the gap is 50 points”. In a country with historically high abstention, this is the ideal setting for that narrative: “Why go out and vote if this woman is going to win?” Following her political consultants’ script, the governing party’s candidate herself said during the third presidential debate that, to win, “all that remains is the formality of 2 June”.

In his article El Meme como eje de la política mexicana — “The meme as the axis of Mexican politics” — Adrián Pablo observes how curious it is that, in an “information age”, human beings are increasingly less informed about what is happening around us. Quantity does not mean quality: even if we see hundreds or thousands of messages, street advertisements, media items or social media posts, that does not mean everything we see is valuable or necessary information (Adrián Pablo, Movimiento Antorchista Nacional, 2024).

To close this controversial subject, let me offer an example: there will be no legislation on AI use for these elections. That will come from the 2027 electoral process onwards, and we still do not know what the legislators of Morena’s majority propose in their law on the subject, since it was left “pending” for the next legislature.

So, should we give up social media, as Jaron Lanier suggests in his book 10 razones para dejar tus redes sociales de inmediato — “10 reasons to leave your social networks immediately”? My answer is no. We must learn and live with the benefits of this technology.

The opportunities¶

To make the most of AI in elections and everyday life, we must focus on civic education. Public policy should promote responsible use of technology. Our country’s businesses and education sector, together with others, must use these technologies as instruments of democratisation, not manipulation and business. It is not just a matter of regulating in the interests of a few, but of developing the potential of emerging technological tools.

In summary, AI is a powerful tool in Mexico’s 2024 elections. Its impact will depend on how we use and regulate it, if we all participate in the process. As citizens, we must remain alert, inform ourselves, be critical and act in response to its influence on public opinion. The future of elections is in technology’s hands, and it is our responsibility to guide it along a fair and transparent path!

If you think AI helped me correct the spelling and syntax of this piece, you are absolutely right!

Ray Acosta

Journalist and storyteller