Former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has said that AI can be a “sword and shield” against election misinformation.

Speaking at an AI event at Meta’s London offices first reported by PA, Clegg said people should be vigilant about generative AI being used to create election disinformation. However, he said AI was helping Meta to reduce the spread of “bad content”.

In 2018, the former politician became head of global affairs and communications at Meta, then known as Facebook, before being promoted in 2022 to president for global affairs.

Clegg went on to claim that Meta’s use of AI had allowed it to reduce the amount of "bad content" on its platform by between 50 and 60 per cent.

He also said that he had seen little evidence that AI had been used in the major elections that occurred in 2024, including those of Taiwan, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

“Some of the work teams have been doing inside Meta is to improve the way that we use our most advanced AI tools to triage content, so that we make sure that the 40,000 people we have working on content moderation really look at the most acute edge cases and they don’t waste a lot of their time looking at stuff that is inoffensive or not a problem has really improved rapidly in recent months,” Clegg explained.

The news comes as many within the UK government have expressed concerns about how AI could be used to influence the upcoming UK general election.

Back in February 2024, home secretary James Cleverly talked about how “malign actors” could influence the next general election with technology such as deepfakes.

Cleverly said these attacks could stem from countries like Iran and Russia in an interview with The Times.

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