ChatGPT-generated op-eds appeared in mainstream Latin American media outlets
Chinese propagandists used ChatGPT to write and translate op-eds that they successfully planted in Spanish-language news outlets last fall, researchers said Friday.
Chinese propagandists used ChatGPT to write and translate op-eds that they successfully planted in Spanish-language news outlets last fall, researchers said Friday.
A report published by OpenAI, the company that owns the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, found that a pro-China campaign had used the program to produce 18 articles and op-eds that were published across eight Spanish-language media platforms. Four of the outlets are Peruvian, two Ecuadorian, one Mexican and one Spanish. None of the eight outlets responded to requests for comment.
The articles don’t mention China, but are broadly critical of the U.S., highlighting problems like homelessness, racism, crime and income inequality. Often the people using ChatGPT asked it to translate and expand the articles from existing ones originally written in Chinese, the researchers found.
“The actor generated these articles by asking our models to translate and expand publicly available Chinese-language articles,” the researchers wrote in the report.
“This is the first time we’ve observed a likely Chinese influence actor successfully publishing articles in mainstream outlets in Latin America,” they added.
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