The Engage Empower Educate Initiative has launched a campaign to counter the spread of artificial intelligence-generated disinformation ahead of Nigeria’s elections, warning that deepfakes and synthetic media could distort public opinion and heighten tensions.
The initiative, known as Peace by Design: Responsible AI for Peace in Africa, will focus on helping voters identify manipulated videos, cloned voices, and other AI-generated content that could mislead the public during the election period.
The group said the increasing accessibility of generative AI had made it possible to produce convincing false content quickly and distribute it widely through social media and messaging platforms.
Its flagship campaign, ‘Verify Before You Share,’ will target WhatsApp users, radio audiences and communities across Nigeria through local-language content and digital literacy initiatives.
The campaign will also establish a network of Digital Peace Ambassadors and a rapid-response fact-checking desk to identify and respond to election-related disinformation.
Founder of the Engage Empower Educate Initiative, Belema Meshack-Hart, said fabricated videos or audio recordings of political candidates could spread rapidly and influence public perception of candidates and election results.
‘We built Peace by Design because we saw the danger before it became a crisis,’ Meshack-Hart said.
‘A fabricated video of a candidate can spread across WhatsApp in minutes and shape how millions of people vote, or whether they trust the result at all.’
The initiative is also calling on technology platforms operating in Nigeria to introduce clearer labelling of AI-generated content, speed up the removal of election-related manipulated content and strengthen content moderation in Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo and Pidgin.
Ezinne Okoro, who led a workshop on AI and peace communication in Africa at the International Peace Summit 2.0, said the threat posed by synthetic media was already emerging and required early intervention.
‘What we heard in that room made clear this isn’t a future risk; it’s happening now,’ Okoro said.
She said communities needed practical tools to identify manipulated content before it influenced voters.
The initiative is also urging political parties and candidates to publicly commit against using deepfakes in election campaigns.
Peace by Design emerged from the International Peace Summit 2.0 organised by the Engage Empower Educate Initiative.
The group is seeking the participation of technology companies, international AI developers, fact-checking organisations and funders in its efforts to combat election-related disinformation ahead of the polls.