WASHINGTON, D.C. — As a bitterly contested US election campaign enters its final stretch, misinformation researchers have raised the alarm over threats posed by AI and foreign influence — but voters appear more concerned about falsehoods from a more familiar source: politicians.

The United States is battling a firehose of misinformation before the November 5 vote — from fake 'news' sites that researchers say were created by Russian and Iranian actors, to manipulated images generated by artificial intelligence tools that have blurred the boundaries between reality and fiction.