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Far-right populists worldwide are using AI to bypass traditional media gatekeepers and spread disinformation at scale. Nowhere is that more true than Brazil, which has been rocked by political disinformation in recent years and is expected to face even more daunting challenges with the rise of generative AI. These concerns are now reaching an inflection point just days ahead of Brazil’s general election on October 4 — a contest that sits at the intersection of the race to influence democracy with AI and the race to control the technology itself.
Thirteen candidates are running for the presidency, but the race is currently dominated by incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Worker’s Party (PT) and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the right-wing Liberal Party (PL). Lula won by a narrow margin in 2022, just edging out Jair Bolsonaro (Flávio’s father), who is now serving time for his role in plotting a coup in an attempt to overturn the 2022 election results.
The upcoming election mirrors other recent elections in the region, with high levels of distrust in democratic institutions and the possibility of another right-wing candidate taking office and aligning closely with the presidency of Donald Trump.
Brazil is also a strategically important location, particularly for AI companies, as it is becoming a priority market for data-center investment and is a crucial source of critical minerals that are needed to power and build AI. The United States and European Union, as well as private companies, are now looking to Brazil as they try to reduce supply-chain dependence on China, and Bolsonaro has indicated his support for such a realignment.
Because of this, access to Brazil’s Government is both politically and commercially important, making the upcoming election a prime target for interference by foreign governments and tech companies alike.
For the past several election cycles, Brazil has served as a testing ground for information warfare tactics in the digital age. The digital environment there has been described as “a fertile ground for innovative strategies to spread polarizing content with the intent of manipulating public debate.”
Several factors converge to make Brazil uniquely vulnerable to political disinformation and malign influence, including a heavy reliance on hyperconnected chat applications, intense political polarization, and a powerful influencer-driven media market.
Brazil was early to recognize the potential dangers of AI as a tool of election influence and interference. Ahead of its 2026 election, the Superior Electoral Court, known as the TSE, prohibited generative AI systems from providing certain election-related responses, including those that recommend or prioritise candidates, parties, and campaigns. The rules also prohibit these systems from expressing an electoral preference or recommending a vote, and impose restrictions on AI-generated content.
In theory, those rules are supposed to help prevent AI systems from interfering in elections via misinformation, disinformation, or content plagued by bias, partisanship, or other forms of hidden influence. In practice, however, that’s not how things are playing out.
Research on these systems has found that most of the major AI models ranked or ordered candidates in nearly every instance during testing, and official sources were not reliably used when doing so. Additionally, responses were often inconsistent and varied based on the wording of the input, meaning that voters who turn to these systems for information could receive differing responses with variable source quality, yet no one would know because no one has access to view all of these responses, except for the companies themselves.
In addition to AI chatbots violating Brazil’s election rules, Meta’s ad system was found to be approving advertisements containing content that violates bot…