Recent high-profile applications for generating text, images, audio and video allow anyone to create content that looks decent. Open AI, which is behind the chatbot Chat GPT, states in an analysis that the technology can drive down the cost of conducting influence operations so that more actors can afford to abuse AI for disinformation purposes.
Spread propaganda
There is no shortage of examples of them being right.
The American research company Graphika, which studies misinformation online, shows in a recent report how a pro-Chinese advocacy group uses the technology. The Financial Times recently reported on similar propaganda spread using synthetic video in Venezuela in support of the Maduro regime.
– In Venezuela’s information desert, disinformation thrives and now the technology exists to create convincing fake news videos, says Adrián González, representative of the Cazadores de Fake News organization that exposes disinformation, to the newspaper.
In several of the cases, the videos have been created with a tool from the London-based company Synthesia. Their application makes it possible to quickly and easily create videos with avatars, which are pre-recorded actors that can be made to say whatever you want in over 120 different languages
Synthesia states that it is against the company’s terms of use to spread incorrect information and that those who abused the service have been suspended.
Create disinformation quickly
Kristian Rönn, with a background in computer science and artificial intelligence, is a tech entrepreneur in sustainability measurement and benefits from AI in his daily work. But he worries about how the technology can also be used for other purposes.
– Anyone can ask an AI to write a million fake news articles, more than any journalist will ever be able to fact-check. Disinformation on a scale we don’t know how to handle.
See SVT’s Alexander Norén’s AI avatar in the clip above.
