Meta fends off AI-aided deception as US election nears
SAN FRANCISCO—Russia is putting generative artificial intelligence to work in online deception campaigns, but its efforts have been unsuccessful, according to a Meta security report released Thursday.
The parent company of Facebook and Instagram found that so far AI-powered tactics “provide only incremental productivity and content-generation gains” for bad actors and Meta has been able to disrupt deceptive influence operations.
Meta’s efforts to combat “coordinated inauthentic behavior” on its platforms come as fears mount that generative AI will be used to trick or confuse people in elections in the United States and other countries.
Facebook has been accused for years of being used as a powerful platform for election disinformation.
Russian operatives used Facebook and other US-based social media to stir political tensions in the 2016 election won by Donald Trump.
Disinformation deluge
Experts fear an unprecedented deluge of disinformation from bad actors on social networks because of the ease of using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT or the Dall-E image generator to make content on demand and in seconds.
AI has been used to create images and videos, and to translate or generate text along with crafting fake news stories or summaries, according to the report.
Russia remains the top source of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” using bogus Facebook and Instagram accounts, Meta security policy director David Agranovich told reporters.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, those efforts have been concentrated on undermining Ukraine and its allies, according to the report.
As the US election approaches, Meta expects Russia-backed online deception campaigns to attack political candidates who support Ukraine.
Behavior based
When Meta scouts for deception, it looks at how accounts act rather than the content they post.
Influence campaigns tend to span an array of online platforms, and Meta has noticed posts on X, formerly Twitter, used to make fabricated content seem more credible.
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