A Scottish Post: The New Election Threat: Disinformation Inside the Answer

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A Scottish Post: The New Election Threat: Disinformation Inside the Answer<br>For years we have worried about election disinformation spreading through social media, but now it's coming through search.

Will Robinson and Tim Chambers<br>Jun 15, 2026

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For years we have worried about election disinformation spreading through social media.<br>Fake Facebook posts.<br>Misleading memes.<br>Manipulated videos.<br>Partisan influencers repeating the same narrative until it feels true.<br>Those threats are still real.

But the Scottish Parliament election in May revealed something new and potentially far more dangerous.<br>“The next generation of election disinformation may not come from a social media post at all. It may come from the answer.”

As more people turn to AI for search, information, and explanations, AI systems are increasingly becoming the front door to information. Unlike Google, which traditionally provided a list of links, AI systems gather information from across the internet and synthesize it into a single narrative response.<br>The problem is that AI systems do not always distinguish between good information, bad information, old information, manipulated information, or completely fabricated information.<br>And when they are wrong, they are often confidently wrong.<br>In the run-up to Scotland’s May 2026 parliamentary election, researchers at Demos ran a snapshot test of major AI systems including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Grok, and the companion chatbot Replika. The test was conducted on a single day, 27 March 2026, during the pre-election window, putting 75 questions to each service about three real Scottish constituencies.<br>The results should alarm anyone who cares about democracy.<br>Researchers found that 34.1% of AI responses contained factual errors.<br>Response quality Share of responses<br>Entirely accurate 55.6%<br>Partly accurate, but with errors 25.3%<br>Entirely inaccurate 8.75%

Reliability varied widely between services. Replika performed worst, with errors in 56.4% of responses, and ChatGPT was not far behind at 46.2%. Gemini and Grok fared better, at 21.8% and 8.97% respectively.<br>Only 55.6% of responses were fully accurate.<br>And usage is climbing fast. In Demos polling the week before the May 7 elections, one in five UK adults, more than 10 million people, said they had used an AI chatbot or AI search to find information about the elections. In 2024 that figure was around 13%.<br>The public already senses the risk. Nearly half (47%) worried these tools would share inaccurate election information, and 49% said they did not trust them for it, leaving AI as distrusted as social media.<br>The examples were not minor mistakes.<br>They involved the kinds of information voters rely upon to make decisions.<br>What AI Told Scottish Voters

What Voters Asked What AI Told Them<br>Who is running in my constituency? Invented a candidate who did not exist<br>What scandals surround a candidate? Fabricated an expenses scandal and a nepotism allegation<br>When is Election Day? Gave the wrong election date<br>What do I need to vote? Incorrectly told voters they needed voter ID<br>What is happening with the SNP investigation? Claimed an SNP fraud investigation was still ongoing against figures who had already been cleared<br>Some of the specific examples are remarkable.<br>The fabrication problem extends beyond live chatbot answers. In 2025, Amazon was forced to pull a run of fake, apparently AI-generated biographies of senior Scottish politicians, including John Swinney, Nicola Sturgeon, and Humza Yousaf, amid concern they could pollute the information around the 2026 election. One title claimed Swinney was a half-Polish teacher from Akron, Ohio, born to a “Polish school dinner lady” named Kazimiera. In reality he is from Edinburgh, his mother was named Agnes, and despite serving as Education Secretary he has never taught in a school. The books carried no label marking them as AI-generated.<br>None of this needed a viral Facebook post or a TikTok to reach a voter.<br>It simply arrived as information, presented as fact.<br>That is what makes this threat different.<br>Not Just Scotland<br>Scotland was not an isolated glitch. Days before the Senedd election in Wales, also held on May 7, BBC Wales tested six major chatbots, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Claude, Meta AI, and Grok, against fictional voter profiles. The results echoed Scotland’s almost exactly.<br>The AI chatbots gave the wrong constituency, named candidates who were not on the ballot, and dropped real ones. Gemini offered up a Senedd member who had died in 2025. Claude wrongly said Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth had stepped down. Identical voter profiles got different answers: ChatGPT steered one floating voter to Labour or Plaid, Grok sent the same voter to Reform.<br>Two tests, two nations, one week, the same pattern . This is not a single system misfiring. It is how these tools...