Google boss Sundar Pichai has said he believes the tech giant, and wider industry, is well placed to combat AI-generated misinformation around elections. Concerns have been raised about the potential for AI-generated audio and visual content to be used by bad actors to interfere with elections around the world – in a year where billions of people in many of the world’s major democracies are due to go to the polls. Speaking during the technology giant’s annual developer conference, Google I/O, Mr Pichai said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the his own company’s ability to handle this threat, as well as the wider industry. He said Google had invested heavily in projects to monitor technological threats, including artificial intelligence, while also looked to develop its own AI tools in a safe and responsible fashion to reduce the potential for them to be used nefariously. “I think we all have come a long way as an industry over the past few years. I think as Google, we have invested in elections integrity as one of our highest priorities as a company, particularly in our products like search and YouTube and as we deploy AI, part of the reason we’re doing work...