March 6 (Reuters) - Image creation tools powered by

artificial intelligence from companies including OpenAI and

Microsoft ( MSFT ) can be used to produce photos that could

promote election or voting-related disinformation, despite each

having policies against creating misleading content, researchers

said in a report on Wednesday.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit

that monitors online hate speech, used generative AI tools to

create images of U.S. President Joe Biden laying in a hospital

bed and election workers smashing voting machines, raising

worries about falsehoods ahead of the U.S. presidential election

in November.

"The potential for such AI-generated images to serve as

'photo evidence' could exacerbate the spread of false claims,

posing a significant challenge to preserving the integrity of

elections," CCDH researchers said in the report.

CCDH tested OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus, Microsoft's ( MSFT ) Image

Creator, Midjourney and Stability AI's DreamStudio, which can

each generate images from text prompts.

The report follows an announcement last month that OpenAI,

Microsoft ( MSFT ) and Stability AI were among a group of 20 tech

companies that signed an agreement to work together to prevent

deceptive AI content from interfering with elections taking

place globally this year. Midjourney was not among the initial

group of signatories.

CCDH said the AI tools generated images in 41% of the

researchers' tests and were most susceptible to prompts that

asked for photos depicting election fraud, such as voting

ballots in the trash, rather than images of Biden or former U.S.

President Donald Trump.

ChatGPT Plus and Image Creator were successful at blocking

all prompts when asked for images of candidates, said the

report.

However, Midjourney performed the worst out of all the

tools, generating misleading images in 65% of the researchers'

tests, it said.

Some Midjourney images are available publicly to other

users, and CCDH said there is evidence some people are already

using the tool to create misleading political content. One

successful prompt used by a Midjourney user was "donald trump

getting arrested, high quality, paparazzi photo."

In an email, Midjourney founder David Holz said "updates

related specifically to the upcoming U.S. election are coming

soon," adding that images created last year were not

representative of the research lab's current moderation

practices.

A Stability AI spokesperson said the startup updated its

policies on Friday to prohibit "fraud or the creation or

promotion of disinformation."

An OpenAI spokesperson said the company was working to

prevent abuse of its tools, while Microsoft ( MSFT ) did not respond to

request for comment.