Members of the U.S. Secret Service stand watch as Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks during her first campaign rally in Milwaukee on Tuesday. The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump and the abrupt withdrawal of President Biden from the race have added even more fuel to an active landscape of conspiracy theories about the 2024 campaign. Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
Law enforcement agents stand near the stage of a campaign rally for former President Donald Trump after a failed assassination attempt on Saturday in Butler, Pa. Conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric have surged since the shooting. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images hide caption
Russian state broadcaster RT broadcasting from near Red Square during the 2018 World Cup in Moscow. The Justice Department alleges an RT employee was behind an AI-powered effort to create fake social media profiles of Americans to spread Russian propaganda in the U.S. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images hide caption
Scarlett Lanzas, second from right, and other information navigators do an exercise in which they use orange string to symbolize how communities are interconnected, at a Nov. 8, 2023, orientation for a pilot project on combating bad information. Keyvan Antonio Heydari hide caption
Spanish speakers are an increasingly important segment of voters. New research examines their exposure to viral lies and conspiracy theories. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption
A right-wing legal and political campaign has disrupted the work of government agencies meant to safeguard voting and subjected researchers studying online harms to harassment and death threats. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
A 2013 file photo of an Epoch Times newspaper box in New York City. The outlet was founded by adherents to the Falun Gong spiritual movement but it has morphed into a pro-Trump conservative news organization in recent years. Earlier this month, the organization's chief financial officer was arrested on federal money laundering charges. Mark Lennihan//AP Photo hide caption
Alex Stamos, the former director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, during congressional testimony in 2014. The research team Stamos led came under fire from Republicans, who alleged that their research amounted to censorship. Win McNamee/Getty Images hide caption
Russian navy recruits perform with the Russian flag in St. Petersburg, Russia, on June 4 during a ceremony marking the departure of recruits to join the army. In a year filled with elections around the world, Russia has stepped up its overt and covert propaganda efforts with a goal of weakening international support for Ukraine and undermining democratic institutions. Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
A file photo of Minister of Diaspora Affairs of Israel Amichai Chikli from May 2024. He was taking part in the Spanish far-right wing party Vox's rally "Europa Viva 24" in Madrid. The New York Times reported that Chikli's ministry funded a covert online influence campaign targeting U.S. lawmakers over the war in Gaza. Chikli denied those reports. Oscar del Pozo/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
A reporter for The Epoch Times holds a microphone during a media event on Oct. 23, 2023, in Berlin, Germany. The Epoch Times is owned by Epoch Media Group and is affiliated with the Falun Gong movement. Sean Gallup/Getty Images hide caption
OpenAI, the company behind generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, announced Thursday that it had taken down influence operations tied to Russia, China and Iran. Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
Voters cast ballots in Georgia's primary election at a polling location on May 21, 2024 in Atlanta. Many officials and researchers worry that audio deepfakes of politicians could be used to sway elections this year. Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images hide caption
Voters filling out their ballots on Jan. 23 in Loudon, N.H. A political consultant faces charges in New Hampshire and steep fines from the Federal Communications Commission for creating a robocall ahead of that state's presidential primary featuring a cloned version of President Biden's voice, urging people not to vote in the primary. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images North America hide caption
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines testifying before a Senate hearing earlier this month. During a May 15 hearing, she identified Russia as the greatest foreign threat to this year's U.S. elections. Win McNamee/Getty Images hide caption
The proliferation of AI-generated images "has made Facebook a very bizarre, very creepy place for me," said Casey Morris, an attorney in Northern Virginia. Facebook hide caption
The director of Resource Center Matamoros, Hugo Terrones, spoke to Muckraker founder Anthony Rubin and his brother after the pair showed up at RCM's office asking about volunteer opportunities. But they were never allowed inside. Verónica Gabriela C��rdenas for NPR hide caption
Abandoned tents remain at the migrant camp in Matamoros, Mexico, that is at the center of a controversy involving viral images of a flyer encouraging migrants to vote for President Biden. Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for NPR hide caption
A newly signed law requires that the Chinese-owned TikTok app be sold to satisfy national security concerns. Joe Raedle/Getty Images hide caption
Jim Hoft, owner of the Gateway Pundit, at the White House in 2019. The website has been hit with defamation lawsuits related to 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories it is accused of spreading. Evan Vucci/AP hide caption
A billboard in central Tehran, Iran, depicts named Iranian ballistic missiles in service, with text in Arabic reading "the honest [person's] promise" and text in Persian reading "Israel is weaker than a spider's web," on April 15. Iran attacked Israel over the weekend with missiles, which it said was a response to a deadly strike on its consulate building in Damascus, Syria. Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
A 2014 file photo of the seal of the Federal Trade Commission in a carpet a FTC headquarters in Washington, DC. The organization is trying to raise consumer awareness about the use of artificial intelligence tools to create convincing audio deepfakes. Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
As deepfake generation technology improves and leaves ever-fewer telltale signs that humans can rely on, computational methods for detection are becoming the norm. But technological solutions are no silver bullet for the problem of detecting AI-generated voices. Aaron Marin for NPR hide caption