London, Jan 10 (IANS): World Economic Forum (WEF) has said that a wave of artificial intelligence-driven disinformation can influence key looming elections and it poses the biggest short-term threat to the global economy, media reports said.

In its annual global risks report, the body that convenes its annual meeting in Davos next week expressed concern that politics can be disrupted by the spread of false information.

The WEF said concerns over the persistent cost of living crisis and the intertwined risks of disinformation and polarised societies will dominate the outlook for 2024, The Guardian reported.

Elections are taking place this year in countries that represent 60 per cent of global GDP, including Britain, the US, the EU and India, and the WEF said the nexus between falsified information and societal unrest will take centre stage during campaigns.

Looking ahead over a longer 10-year period, extreme weather events and climate change were named as the most pressing risks by the experts polled by the WEF, The Guardian reported.

“An unstable global order characterised by polarising narratives and insecurity, the worsening impacts of extreme weather and economic uncertainty are causing accelerating risks – including misinformation and disinformation – to propagate,” said Saadia Zahidi, a managing director of the WEF.