根据皮尤研究中心的调查，大约 50% 的受访美国成年人曾经使用过 AI 聊天机器人，8% 表示在中期选举前曾使用这些工具查找候选人和政策信息。
Around 50 percent of recently surveyed US adults have at one time used an AI chatbot, and 8 percent say they have used these tools ahead of the midterms to find information on candidates and policies, according to Pew Research.
但这些聊天机器人提供的大量信息已过时，且存在幻觉或源自党派网站。
But a lot of information from these chatbots is out of date and has been hallucinated or sourced from partisan websites.
即使是号称非党派的聊天机器人——OpenAI 的 ChatGPT、Anthropic 的 Claude 和 Google 的 Gemini——在回答中期选举相关问题时也表现不佳。
Even supposedly non-partisan chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini have been found wanting when it comes to questions about the midterms.
就在上周，Google 的 AI 模式拒绝提供 2020 年大选结果，而该公司的 Gemini 聊天机器人称宾夕法尼亚州申请邮寄选票的截止日期是 11 月 3 日，而非实际截止日期 10 月 27 日，这是 Forum AI 研究发现的。
Just last week, Google’s AI Mode refused to provide the results of the 2020 elections and the company’s Gemini chatbot said the deadline to request a mail-in ballot in Pennsylvania was November 3, rather than the real deadline of October 27, according to research by Forum AI.
根据 Forum AI 的研究，主流聊天机器人给出的选举相关回答中，近 40% 至少包含一个事实错误。8 月，当 Forum AI 的研究人员询问为何应该投票给北卡罗来纳州众议员唐·戴维斯时，Claude 给出的回答将这位议员与同名的“前学区督导”混淆了。
According to the Forum AI research, almost 40 percent of election answers given by all the mainstream chatbots contained at least one factual error. In August, when Forum AI’s researchers asked why someone should vote for North Carolina congressman Don Davis, Claude gave a response that confused the lawmaker with a “former school superintendent” of the same name.
Google 和 Anthropic 未回复置评请求。OpenAI 将《连线》引向一篇概述该公司 2026 年选举应对方针的博客文章。
Google and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment. Open AI directed WIRED to a blog outlining the company’s approach to elections in 2026.
部分问题在于，聊天机器人依赖的在线信息池日益存在问题。NewsGuard 的研究发现，当被问及与中期选举相关的候选人和政策时，主流聊天机器人近 50% 的时间会引用所谓的“粉红浆”网站。“粉红浆”网站外观上像主流新闻网站，实则由政治或意识形态团体及个人资助。
Part of the problem is that chatbots are reliant on an increasingly problematic pool of online information. Research by NewsGuard found that mainstream chatbots cite so-called “pink slime” websites nearly 50 percent of the time when asked about candidates and policies related to the midterms. “Pink slime” sites present as mainstream news websites, but are in fact funded by political or ideological groups and individuals.
在中期选举前夕，此类网站大量涌现，聊天机器人也开始关注它们。据NewsGuard称，表现最差的是OpenAI的ChatGPT，其在70%以上的搜索中引用了“粉红色淤泥”网站，而xAI的Grok聊天机器人表现最好，引用“粉红色淤泥”网站的比例为30%。
Ahead of the midterms, many more of these sites have sprung up, and chatbots are paying attention. The worst offender, according to NewsGuard, was OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which cited the “pink slime” sites in more than 70 percent of searches, while xAI’s Grok chatbot performed best, citing “pink slime” sites in 30 percent of cases.
“我不认为大多数美国人已准备好在消费级AI时代应对选举，”美国阳光计划执行主任、拜登政府前虚假信息沙皇尼娜·扬科维奇对《连线》杂志表示。“问题之一在于，高管和公司对AI的能力严重过度承诺。它必须从某处摄取这些信息，而这些来源往往不太好。而且它是预测性的，所以如果不知道答案，经常会编造内容。”
“I don't think that most Americans are prepared to navigate an election in the age of consumer AI,” Nina Jankowicz, executive director of the American Sunlight Project and a former disinformation czar during the Biden administration, tells WIRED. “One of the problems is that executives and companies have really overpromised on what AI is capable of. It has to ingest this information from somewhere, and often those sources are not very good. And it's predictive, so if it doesn't know the answer, it does frequently make things up.”