Yiaga Africa, others seek safeguards against AI election manipulation – Daily Trust

Yiaga Africa, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and different stakeholders have referred to as for stronger safeguards against the misuse of synthetic intelligence (AI) in Nigeria’s 2027 basic elections, warning that deepfakes, disinformation and cyber threats may undermine electoral integrity.
The name was contained in a communiqué issued yesterday on the finish of the 2026 AI and Democracy Forum, held in Abuja from October 14 to 16, which introduced collectively electoral our bodies, expertise firms, safety establishments, civil society organisations, journalists and policymakers to look at the implications of AI for the elections.
The discussion board beneficial that INEC publish an election-specific AI governance framework detailing the proposed functions of the expertise, their dangers, knowledge sources, safeguards and the tasks of expertise distributors.
They additionally referred to as on the fee to ascertain a clear protocol for managing election outcomes, masking the seize of bodily Form EC8A, any AI-assisted extraction of figures, digital transmission, verification, collation and the decision of discrepancies.
The communiqué confused that human verification and legally prescribed procedures should stay central to electoral processes, notably the place errors may have an effect on voting rights, the credibility of outcomes and public confidence.
It beneficial unbiased pre-election audits, stress assessments of results-upload and transmission methods, and verification of expertise distributors’ claims, including that AI-generated alerts about duplicate voter registrations or anomalous outcomes ought to set off human investigation quite than automated deletion, rejection or suspension.