Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) Kenya Chapter held its annual conference in Mombasa from 8th to 12th April 2024. The conference, which is themed Digital Trust: Charting the Course for a Resilient Future explored the ground-breaking confluence of digital trust, emerging technology, and the evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Commission Secretary and CEO Marjan H. Marjan, MBS, who is a member of ISACA Kenya Chapter and one of the key speakers in the conference, made a presentation on the opportunities and inherent risks in the use of AI in elections management.

“Election Management Bodies (EMBs) stand to benefit from the emergence of AI especially in voter education, elections results management and communication. AI tools can be used to quickly translate electoral and digital documents to difference languages, countercheck and verify election results as well as analyze and identify patterns in provisional voting among others,” said Marjan.

The CEO added that the Commission deployed AI in the 2022 General Election by using a WhatsApp Bot to disseminate electoral information, analyzing the Register of Voters (RoV) to check for deduplications and partnered with International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) to develop a hate speech digital and social media monitoring tool.

“AI is being used to develop and spread misinformation, disinformation and mal-information on digital and social media platforms, escalate hate speech, increase the digital divide among other risk factors,” said Marjan.