It confused that essential electoral selections would stay underneath human management.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Joash Amupitan, SAN, gave the reassurance on Wednesday whereas delivering the keynote tackle on the Artificial Intelligence and Democracy Forum 2026 in Abuja.
“Algorithms will not, and must never, decide the 2027 vote,” he mentioned.
He added that Nigerians alone had the appropriate to decide on their leaders.
He defined that human oversight, authorized procedures and judicial evaluate would stay essential all through the electoral course of.
The INEC chairman, nevertheless, warned that the rising use of AI may pose critical challenges to the credibility of elections, notably by the unfold of faux movies, cloned audio recordings and false info.
He mentioned advances in generative AI had made it simpler for folks to create convincing movies of candidates making statements they’d by no means made or to impersonate electoral officers to unfold false directions.
Amupitan warned that such content material may mislead voters, create confusion and undermine public confidence within the electoral course of.
“AI-generated videos or audio recordings could spread false information about a candidate withdrawing from an election, a poll being postponed or voters being told not to come out to vote,” Amupitan mentioned.
He added that criminals may impersonate the INEC chairman, resident electoral commissioners and different officers to flow into pretend election pointers or unauthorised outcomes.
To tackle these threats, Amupitan disclosed that the fee had established an AI Unit inside its Information and Communication Technology Directorate.
He mentioned the unit would use digital monitoring instruments, deepfake detection software program and knowledge evaluation to establish deceptive content material referring to elections.
Amupitan additionally urged political events and candidates to undertake an moral code on the usage of AI, notably by avoiding deepfakes, pretend identities and deceptive political commercials.
