Chatbots make “unreliable” voting aids, privacy watchdog warns

Privacy watchdog AP has called on voters not to rely on AI chatbots for advice about who to vote for in next week’s general election because they are not impartial and unreliable, and “affect the cornerstone of democracy”.

The AP compared popular chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok, with online voting aids Kieskompas and Stemwijzer and concluded that the chatbots would recommend a vote for either the far right PVV or green left alliance GroenLinks-PvdA in over 56% of cases.

Any preference for a right-wing party or a left-wing party would be “hoovered up” to either PVV (30%) or GL-PvdA (25%), the AP said, creating “a strong polarisation of the Dutch political landscape”.

Parties like D66, SP, VVD or PvdD ended up as a first choice much less frequently, the investigation showed. The BBB, CDA, SGP and DENK hardly got a look-in at all, even when the voter’s preferences tallied precisely with one of these parties.

• Left, right or centre: the 15 biggest Dutch political parties explained

Unlike traditional online voting aids, chatbots have not been developed to help voters decide which party they will vote for.

They are trained using unverifiable data, including incorrect or out of date information from the internet and that results in a skewed representation of the political landscape, the AP said.

“Chatbots look like clever aids but not for voting,” AP chairwoman Monique Verdier said. “Voters are being unwittingly advised to vote for a party that doesn’t coincide with what they want. That affects the integrity of free and honest elections, which are the cornerstone of democracy.”