Online propaganda campaigns are using 'AI slop', researchers say

Many of the largest and most widely established state-sponsored online propaganda campaigns have embraced using AI, a new report finds.

Many of the largest and most widely established state-sponsored online propaganda campaigns have embraced using artificial intelligence, a new report finds — and they’re often bad at it.

The report, by the social media analytics company Graphika, analyzed nine ongoing online influence operations — including ones it says are affiliated with China’s and Russia’s governments — and found that each has, like much of social media, increasingly adopted generative AI to make images, videos, text and translations.

The researchers found that sponsors of propaganda campaigns have come to rely on AI for core functions like making content and creating influencer personas on social media, streamlining some campaigns. But the researchers say that content is low quality and gets little engagement.

The findings run counter to what many researchers had anticipated with the growing sophistication of generative AI — artificial intelligence that mimics human speech, writing and images in pictures and videos. The technology has rapidly become more advanced in recent years, and some experts warned that propagandists working on behalf of authoritarian countries would embrace high-quality, convincing synthetic content designed to deceive even the most discerning people in democratic societies.

Resoundingly, though, the Graphika researchers found that the AI content created by those established campaigns is low-quality “slop,” ranging from unconvincing synthetic news reporters in YouTube videos to clunky translations or fake news websites that accidentally include AI prompts in headlines.