AI chatbots have been shown to be “inaccurate and evidently prejudiced” when providing election recommendations, the Dutch data protection authority (AP) has stated, raising alarms 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 evaluated by the authority “frequently recommend identical two parties”, regardless of the user’s question or command, the watchdog noted in a report published ahead of the 29 October election.
For over 50% of instances, the AI recommended either the far-right Freedom party (PVV) of the politician Geert Wilders or the leftwing GroenLinks-PvdA headed by the former European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans.
Some parties, such as the moderate CDA, “are almost never mentioned”, even when the voter’s query precisely aligns with the positions of these parties, the report indicated.
Authority Figure Cautions Against Using AI Chatbots for Voting Guidance
The deputy head of the AP, Monique Verdier, stated that while chatbots may seem like clever tools, “as a voting aid, they consistently fail”. Citizens were being steered toward a political group that did not necessarily align with their political views, she emphasized.
“This directly impacts a cornerstone of democracy: the integrity of free and fair elections,” said Verdier. “We thus caution against employing AI assistants for election recommendations, as their functioning is opaque and hard to confirm.”
Election Context and Political Landscape
Netherlands citizens vote on 29 October in an election that will be keenly observed across the continent for the showing of the Freedom party.
The right-leaning group of Geert Wilders is ahead in surveys but the gap to the left-wing and centre-right parties seems to be closing, with many voters yet to make up their minds.
All major parties have rejected a coalition with the PVV, meaning the runner-up party is most likely to supply the future head of government.
Inadvertent Prejudice Linked to AI Operation
The authority stressed that the AI systems were not intentionally prejudiced, and that their “identified shortcomings” are a consequence of the way AI chatbots operate.
