(By Alessandra Briganti)
So far there has been no fake news
'apocalypse' in the artificial intelligence era, no
'AI-pocalypse Now'.
The "super election year" 2024 did not see a tsunami of
disinformation pushed by artificial intelligence that many
analysts had feared, according to a study by the Munich Security
Conference.
It said that, although artificial intelligence aggravates the
threat of disinformation operations by providing more powerful
instruments with which to create and spread fake news, its
impact so far has been "negligible".
The World Economic Forum had ranked "AI-generated misinformation
and disinformation" as one of the main threats to global
stability in 2024, when votes were cast in more than 60
countries accounting for over half the world's population.
Yet the atomic bomb of fake news created by AI did not go off.
According to the experts, AI-enabled tactics in disinformation
campaigns were both less prevalent and less impactful than
expected.
"The few salient cases included French far-right campaigners
using some AI-generated images, for instance depicting migrants
arriving on France's shores," the study said.
"Similar right-wing GenAI imagery was used in the EU elections.
In the UK, GenAI content only went 'viral' in a handful of
cases".
So the nightmare scenarios forecast by some analysts did not
materialize and there were several reasons for this, according
to the Munich Security Conference.
The first regards government interventions and tech companies'
efforts to limit the spread of deceptive content.
Second, campaigning industry chiefs may also be delaying the
adoption of AI, in the US for example, fearing potential
reputational costs.
Furthermore, the use of AI disinformation may not influence
voting habits in a significant way as most voters hold firm
voting preferences regardless of new information, real or
fabricated.
The final factor the experts highlighted is the level of
sophistication of tactics to manipulate contents with AI and
spread them. So far actors have favoured conventional methods
that they are already highly practiced in.
The report said that this year the "atomic bomb" of AI
disinformation may not have detonated, but the fuse has been lit
and they warned against lowering the guard against worrying new
trends regarding the potential impact of AI on democracy.
First of all, AI tools are rapidly becoming more sophisticated.
Pervasive AI content is already making it more difficult for
citizens to sift through information online with the risk of the
public becoming disengaged from political news.
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