INEC says AI won’t decide 2027 vote: what its new deepfake unit means for you

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has set up an Artificial Intelligence Unit to detect deepfakes and other AI-generated falsehoods ahead of the 2027 general elections, its chairman, Professor Joash Amupitan, SAN, said on Wednesday, 14 October 2026.

He announced it in his keynote address at the Artificial Intelligence and Democracy Forum 2026 in Abuja, held with the civic group Yiaga Africa, BusinessDay, Tribune and Blueprint reported. “Algorithms will not, and must never, decide the 2027 vote,” he said, a message INEC also posted on its official X account.

Why does this matter to you?

The 2027 elections will involve more than 103 million registered voters at 176,846 polling units across 774 local government areas, BusinessDay and Tribune reported. Under INEC’s revised timetable, the presidential and National Assembly elections hold on Saturday, 16 January 2027, and the governorship and State House of Assembly elections on Saturday, 6 February 2027, Voice of Nigeria reported.

AI tools now make it cheap to produce fake but convincing videos, pictures and audio. Amupitan warned that deepfakes could be used to announce false candidate withdrawals or election postponements, or to impersonate INEC officials and spread fake guidelines or results, Tribune and Parrot Nigeria reported.

“The greatest threat we face is not the hacking of a ballot box, but the hacking of the voter’s mind,” he said, according to BusinessDay and Blueprint.

Will a computer decide who wins?

No, according to INEC. Amupitan said critical decisions, including result collation, voter accreditation and candidate qualification, would not be fully automated or left to autonomous systems, BusinessDay, Blueprint and Parrot Nigeria reported.

“Human accountability, statutory oversight and judicial review will remain paramount at every stage of the electoral chain,” he said.

Any AI tool INEC uses for logistics or to manage its databases will first be audited for explainability, fairness and security, Tribune and Blueprint reported. INEC is also buying more Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines, according to BusinessDay.

What will INEC’s AI unit do?

The unit sits in INEC’s Information and Communication Technology Directorate and will use real-time monitoring tools, deepfake detection software and data analytics to track threats online, BusinessDay and Tribune reported. INEC says it is also working with technology platforms to debunk AI-generated falsehoods quickly.

Amupitan listed other ways AI could help behind the scenes, according to Tribune and Blueprint:

• planning how staff and materials reach polling units before 7:30am on election day, using traffic, weather and security data;
• running parallel statistical checks on polling-unit results uploaded through the eEC8A, with anything unusual flagged for human review;
• spotting duplicate registrations in the voter register;
• translating voter education materials into Nigerian languages.

What is INEC asking others to do?

Amupitan urged Meta, X, Google, TikTok and Telegram to restrict unlabelled synthetic media that impersonates candidates or electoral officials, and to enforce disclaimers on political adverts, Tribune and Parrot Nigeria reported. He asked political parties to sign an Ethical AI Code of Conduct, and proposed an Electoral Information Integrity Coalition of INEC, civil society, the media and telecom operators to give early warning of AI-driven falsehoods.

INEC will also work with the National Orientation Agency to add AI media literacy to voter education, Tribune reported. Official election information comes from INEC itself, through its website and verified social media accounts.

What happens next

Amupitan said INEC had completed 10 of the 14 major operational milestones under the Electoral Act 2026, BusinessDay and Parrot Nigeria reported. The presidential and National Assembly elections are three months away, on 16 January 2027.

GistMatrix explained the voter register display here earlier this month.