According to some experts, advanced artificial intelligence platforms could pose a threat to election security as early as 2024, potentially serving as a significant source of misinformation.

“We should be scared s—less,”Gary Marcus, professor emeritus of cognitive science at New York University and an AI expert, told Fortune last week, according to Fox News.

These remarks were made only a few months after a Twitter account called the Chicago Lakefront News published a photograph of mayoral candidate Paul Vallas, accompanied by a fabricated recording in which Vallas seemed to belittle police shootings, stating that back in his day, law enforcement officers would kill up to 18 people in their career and “no one would bat an eye.”

“This ‘Defund the Police’ rhetoric is going to cause unrest and lawlessness in the city of Chicago. We need to stop defunding the police and start refunding them,” the recording noted.

Despite being quickly exposed as a fake recording created by an artificial intelligence platform that closely emulated voices, the tweet was viewed by thousands of individuals. Two months later in April, Vallas would ultimately lose in a closely contested runoff, although the bogus recording was not seen as a determining factor in the election.

Nonetheless, Marcus expressed his conviction that such technology will have a significant impact on future elections, Fox News noted.

“It is hard to see how AI-generated misinformation will not become a major force in the next election,” he told Fortune.

Marcus cautioned that “generative AI” technology could be exploited by adversaries, such as Russia, to inundate American voters with a deluge of misinformation. The Rand Corporation’s investigation of the matter yielded similar apprehensions, characterizing such strategies as the “firehose of falsehood” that may be directed at voters in the lead-up to upcoming elections, Fox News added.

However, Chris Meserole, a Brookings Institution fellow who focuses on the implications of AI, sought to downplay concerns that such technologies will wield a significant influence in the 2024 election, asserting that the technology is not yet sufficiently advanced to have a considerable impact, Fox said.

That said, Meserole acknowledged that he could envision a scenario in which a recording materializes during a critical juncture of the election that would be challenging for a candidate to demonstrate was falsified.

“I don’t think this will completely change the game and 2024 will look significantly different than 2020 or 2016,” he told Fortune.