The 2024 election cycle is right around the corner and with that comes massive swaths of information about the candidates and the election itself. With the advent of generative AI and how detailed deep fakes have become, it's hard to wade through what is real and what is fake. Yahoo Finance Tech Editor Dan Howley joins the Live show, as part of the weekly series Yahoo Finance's 2024 Investor Guide, to break down the impact generative AI can have on the election and what people should be on the lookout for.

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Video Transcript

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JARED BLIKRE: The 2024 US presidential election is in just under a year. As candidates battle it out for the seat and the Oval Office, AI experts are warning on the potential massive upswing in disinformation and misinformation in the campaigns. And here with an investor's guide for what 2024 can offer and what this means for AI and social media companies, let's go to now Dan Howley, Yahoo Finance's own. Dan, what are the details?

DAN HOWLEY: That's right, Jared. The AI revolution has really supercharged a lot of companies as far as spending and really just generated tons of conversation as to the benefits of it. But there also are some drawbacks and those include the spread of disinformation and misinformation.

Part of that has to do with people being able to generate lifelike images, videos, and audio increasingly of individuals and basically allowing them to manipulate the news. And so we've seen some instances of this. There was an image that had spread earlier in the year about appearing to be an explosion outside the Pentagon. It sent shares on Wall Street sliding.

They quickly recovered though because it was clear that this was just a fake. The Pentagon responded saying that there was no explosion at all. Everything was fine and that this was just an AI manipulation.

But we also saw prior to former President Trump's arrest in New York, images that were generated of him running from police, being gang tackled. We've also seen a deepfake of Vladimir Putin speaking to Vladimir Putin. So it's everywhere now.

And some of the experts that I spoke to say that we're going to see a tsunami of disinformation around 2024. So what does this mean for companies? Well, some of the experts I spoke to said, look, it comes down to whether or not they have robust terms and conditions, meaning that they say that what people use their services for have to be law abiding and not for nefarious purposes. And it comes down to reputation.