AI search company Perplexity is testing whether using AI to provide important voting information is a good idea with a new election information hub it announced Friday. The hub provides AI-generated answers to voting questions, candidate summaries, and more, and the company will use data from The Associated Press to provide live vote counts on Election Day, Nov. 5. They have announced that they will be tracking it.
Perplexity says voter information such as voting requirements, location and time is based on data from Democracy Works. (The same group provides a similar feature for Google). The election-related answers come from a “curated set of the most reliable and informative sources.”
Perplexity spokeswoman Sarah Plotnick confirmed in an email to The Verge that both AP and Democracy Works are official partners of the hub. Plotnick detailed Perplexity’s sources.
We chose domains that are nonpartisan and fact-checked, such as Ballotpedia and news outlets. We are actively monitoring our systems to ensure we continue to prioritize these sources when answering election-related questions.
The hub provides details about what’s on your ballot, regardless of where you enter it (such as address or city). There’s also a tab to monitor the presidential, U.S. Senate and House elections starting Tuesday, with a state-by-state breakdown showing how many votes were counted and who’s leading.
When I click on a candidate, the AI summary does not mention that Robert F. Kennedy, who is on the ballot in my area, has dropped out of the race. There was a mistake. Also listed are “Future Madame Potas” candidates, and if you click on them, you’ll see the above about Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy, except for a few meme photos that aren’t in her usual rundown. A summary was displayed.
Plotnick said the company is investigating why the summary did not mention that Kennedy dropped out. “Depending on your location, there may be write-in candidates,” Plotnick added, explaining why the list of future Madame Portas appeared. (Although it’s not explained why Harris was singled out, Ballotpedia says the future Madame Potas is indeed running as a write-in candidate.)
These errors highlight the challenges of using highly accurate generative AI for high-stakes use cases like this, and why other AI companies avoid it. ChatGPT, Meta AI, and Google Gemini each direct voter information questions to other resources such as canivote.org and Google Search. Microsoft’s Copilot refused to respond to my attempts.
