Each month, our experts at Cyabra list some of the interesting articles, items, essays and stories they’ve read this month. Come back every month for the current misinformation, disinformation, and social threat intelligence news.
A New Kind of AI Copy Can Fully Replicate Famous People. The Law Is Powerless.
“The Chinese-built virtual Seligman is part of a broader wave of AI chatbots modeled on real humans, using the powerful new systems known as large language models to simulate their personalities online. Meta is experimenting with licensed AI celebrity avatars; you can already find internet chatbots trained on publicly available material about dead historical figures.”
As Social Media Guardrails Fade and AI Deepfakes Go Mainstream, Experts Warn of Impact on Elections
“Many Americans, egged on by former President Donald Trump, have continued to push the unsupported idea that elections throughout the U.S. can’t be trusted. A majority of Republicans (57%) believe Democrat Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president. Meanwhile, generative artificial intelligence tools have made it far cheaper and easier to spread the kind of misinformation that can mislead voters and potentially influence elections. And social media companies that once invested heavily in correcting the record have shifted their priorities.”
“Some false missing persons notices have repeatedly used a photo of a Dutch model, describing her as a missing Irish teen under many different names, from many different parts of the country. The National Missing Persons Helpline has seen a rise in false alerts shared online in the last 12 months.”
2024 Elections Are Ripe Targets for Foes of Democracy
“When Facebook’s parent company, Meta, started digging into them, it found that the accounts were copying posts from Twitter, now known as X, and pasting them onto Facebook. The accounts were pretty obviously fake: While they claimed to belong to Americans, Meta found they were being operated from China, with stolen names and profile pictures. The accounts copied posts from American politicians across the spectrum, from Democrats Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and the presidential campaign war room of GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The accounts’ subjects included abortion, health care, military funding and aid for Ukraine.”
War in Ukraine: In 2023, Russian Disinformation Continued to Dominate
“A frequent topic in the information war between Ukraine and Russia is the allegation that the Ukrainian authorities are using “child soldiers”. As proof of this, some pro-Russian accounts shared a video showing three young-looking people in military uniform.”
Anti–government Protest in Belgrade: Moscow’s Planned Influence Operation?
“The Russians exaggerated the threat of a “color revolution” in Serbia on purpose to intimidate the Vucic regime, although the Serbian President had no confirmed information about a potential coup.”
