AI assistants have been shown to be “unreliable and clearly biased” when providing election recommendations, the Dutch data protection authority (AP) has reported, issuing warnings about a potential threat to democracy just eight days before the country’s general election.
Testing Reveals Repeated Partiality in Chatbot Recommendations
The four chatbots tested by the authority “often end up with the same two parties”, irrespective of the voter’s inquiry or input, the regulator noted in a report published ahead of the late October vote.
In more than half of the cases, the AI recommended either the far-right Freedom party (PVV) of the politician Geert Wilders or the progressive GroenLinks-PvdA led by the former European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans.
Some parties, such as the moderate CDA, “are rarely ever cited”, despite the fact that the voter’s query exactly matches the positions of these parties, the report pointed out.
Authority Figure Cautions Against Using AI Chatbots for Voting Guidance
The vice-chair of the data protection agency, the official Monique Verdier, commented that while chatbots may seem like clever tools, “as a voting aid, they consistently fail”. Voters were being pushed toward a political group that might not correspond to their ideological beliefs, she emphasized.
“This immediately affects a cornerstone of democracy: the honesty of open and just votes,” Verdier stated. “We thus caution against employing AI assistants for election recommendations, as their operation is unclear and hard to confirm.”
Election Context and Political Landscape
The Dutch head to the polls on 29 October in an electoral contest that will be closely watched across the continent for the performance of the PVV.
The right-leaning group of Geert Wilders is ahead in surveys but the gap to the left-wing and centre-right parties appears to be narrowing, with numerous electors yet to make up their minds.
Every significant political faction have rejected a coalition with the Freedom party, meaning the runner-up party is highly probable to provide the next prime minister.
Unintentional Bias Attributed to Chatbot Functioning
The AP emphasised that the bots were not deliberately biased, and that their “identified shortcomings” are a consequence of the way AI chatbots operate.
