Electoral Hallucinations: Safeguarding UK elections in the world of LLMs and AI chatbots

This report examines the impact of five popular chatbots and text-based AI services on the UK's information supply chain and democracy in real time.

Active

Since 2026

London

As AI chatbots and search tools rapidly become part of everyday information seeking, concerns are growing about the impact these systems are having on democratic trust and election integrity. Researchers tested how the services ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Grok and Replika performed on a single day during the 2026 Scottish pre-election window. We reveal new evidence of the scale of these services' unreliability during elections and make recommendations for the government to close the regulatory gap. This is the latest report in Demos Digital's Epistemic Security programme that focuses on securing the UK's information supply chains and building our democratic resilience to adverse influences.