This was going to be true, AI or not. There’s no reason for them NOT to try to dupe you into voting for them… or at least against the other person. That’s been the way it’s been since the beginning. It’s definitely been ramping up the last 30-60 years, and tech will 100% be leveraged to those ends where it can be because they’d be dumb not to. They want to be in office. Whatever gaslighting they can do, they’ll do.
Without some sort of monitoring or accountability it’s just going to get worse. But even if they had fines for misinformation, they’ll just do some math to find out if the fine is worth it. If they put out an ad that says something about the other side that drives voters to them and they get caught, the voters likely won’t see a retraction. Their views likely won’t change back, so the fine doesn’t do anything but increase the cost of the ad and may still be worth it.