Shaping Perceptions: The Role of AI in the Spread of Misinformation

Dr. John P. Sullins, from SSU's Philosophy Department.

We will discuss the use of AI-generated images in political advertisements.

Photograph of Lincoln by Alexander Gardner after the battle of Gettysburg. among the most powerful and moving images of character that portrait photographers have ever achieved.

the Library of Congress

The Dream of Digital Democracy

Accelerating Change

• “Technological change is fast and politics can no longer catch up. Already now, crucial choices affecting our lives, for example choices concerning the Internet, have not been through democratic processes. Even dictators are overwhelmed by the pace of technological change” pg.63.

AI erodes trust in democratic institutions

• Generative AI creates personalized messages to millions of voters and uses machine learning techniques to learn what works to sway your vote, or gets you to accept false information!

AI creates digital avatars that can make a candidate look more in touch with their constituents or make their opponent seem more out of touch

• A near future application would be an AI chat that talks to individual voters as if it is the candidate themselves.

Real or fake?

AI images demeaning opponents

• Argentina 2023 Sergio Massa’s campaign created a false video of his opponent Javier Milei where a fake Milei instructed people that human organs were very lucrative to sell so they should consider having more children as an investment in the future where they could be harvested for organs. They even openly said this was only AI generated, yet it was still shared millions of times doing great damage to Milei’s campaign. (Editorial note, he won anyway and perhaps that is worse news than the AI shenanigans).
• In Turkey in 2023 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s campaign shared AI created videos of his opponent being endorsed by Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a known and feared terrorist group.
• Trump’s retweet of a hogtied Biden

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AI images Easy to create and distribute

• Meanwhile Elon has completely eliminated any attempt to moderate what is posted on X and other companies have greatly reduced their efforts as well.

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Some examples

https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intellgence-memes-trump-harris-deepfakes-256282c31fa9316c4059f09036c70fa9

To the Future!!!!

https://stablediffusionweb.com/image/16790092-donald-trump-riding-rocket-motorcycle