An article from Insider reports that a developer built an AI-powered “propaganda machine” using OpenAI tools in two months, with an operating cost of about $400.
The developer, said to be an cyber security expert, said to have designed the tool, CounterClod, for demonstration purposes. “They wanted to see AI disinformation ‘work in the real world‘, adding that ‘strong language competencies of large language models are perfectly suited to reading and writing fake news articles‘.”
In the following video, the developer explains the scope of the project and its implications,including the danger of mass-produced AI disinformation.
The developer, Nea Paw, not real name, told the Wired “I don’t think there is a silver bullet for this, much in the same way there is no silver bullet for phishing attacks, spam, or social engineering. Mitigations are possible, such as educating users to be watchful for manipulative AI-generated content, making generative AI systems try to block misuse, or equipping browsers with AI-detection tools. But I think none of these things are really elegant or cheap or particularly effective.”
Reacting to the project, Renee DiResta, technical research manager for the Stanford Internet Observatory, told the Wired that it was convincing. “In addition to government actors, social media management agencies and mercenaries who offer influence operations services will no doubt pick up these tools and incorporate them into their workflows. Getting fake content widely distributed and shared is challenging, but this can be done by paying influential users to share it.”
The Insider reports that the developer has not uploaded the project to the internet. “It would mean actively pushing out disinformation and propaganda. Once the genie is out on the internet, there is no knowing where it would end up”, Paw told Insider.
The Insider adds “The threat AI poses to democracy through its ability to accelerate the creation and spread of online disinformation has been one of the biggest concerns in the AI debate“.