Bots Utilizing AI Flood Social Media with Disinformation
Almost every month, the Internet offers a new and creative idea for a “get-rich” scheme that requires no effort. Many have adopted AI tools to improve their work and see better returns. Local news channels post their anchors, and the Foreign Ministry is constructing a digital source. Unlike translation and grammar checking, which are typical and expected, it is becoming an integral element of our lives and is hardly associated with AI anymore.
Uncovering the AI-powered bot farm
There is another niche: generating fully original material from scratch. Creating it requires merely twenty or even as little as a minute. The whole AI platform is used to produce video (or process video that has been stolen), write text and audio tracks, stage everything, and add descriptions and hashtags for publishing them on the social network in only a few seconds.
Thus, social networks gradually become just AI garbage bins, and such instruments allow people to enjoy the thought that one created a promotional video that could become popular and generate income. Or they spread Russian propaganda messages to the point where they become the dominant voice on the issue.
You will see how AI contributes to the message about a fake farm using the example of a bot farm of 300 channels that used AI to process and generate videos from both YouTube channels if they are Russian or Belarussian in origin. Here is Anastasiia Kozhevnikova, a local girl from Mariupol who is now a well-known Russian YouTuber. Although she has only 190,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel, she is a good example of how the smart use of the Internet can give a voice to an individual suppressed in their native countries. She has a good reputation as the spreader of Russia’s propaganda myths of “Russia as Savior” and the rise of Mariupol from destruction.
Nevertheless, on leaving her profile, you are struck with the absence of information on the discussed subject. She explores who she is and talks about what they always vlog about. How does the viewer know that other similar networks exist in the community? What if it is a link to the YouTube channel of a super-popular social media star? Cards with pictures of the organization’s mission are quite possible. Even more generous card numbers, maybe. In contrast, there is a brief absence of flavorful expression with an Incentive to subscribe. In this connection, each channel can be specialized. However, I found out that a great deal of such channels already have them.
The insidious spread of AI disinformation
Similarly, the sophisticated Google search generated 298 TikTok channel identification messages with the same description. It so happens that there are similarities in their lives. This is what they did to begin scanning and choosing one campaign within the Russian-language artificial TikTok farm. The only thing that makes them different is the subject matter they focus on.
Whether you search for “Russian propaganda” or “imperial conspiracy theories,” the assortment is enormous. At the same time, recipes, tips for mechanics, gearhead videos, cartoons for children, bloggers, etc., tell people about graveyards in Russia or find treasures in the debris of local scrap metal. They could only be grouped in the ‘offline stars’ category since the latter are the only cardboards we meet. It is worth mentioning that media activity was restricted in Russia from March 2022 until recently. For instance, TikTok, one of the most popular networks, was considered illegal.
No information about the authors on the discovered station’s farms suggests again that piracy was encountered here. By the end of May, you will have seen the numbers, probably more than 10 million. Likes and even more views on the channel have existed for six months already. However, the further into this virtual fantasy world, the more fake and non-existing content will be abundant. In this case, Russia will employ it in its information war. Russian bots and bot farms usually replicate and regurgitate popular messages on social media, which makes them easier for social media algorithms to detect.
The use of AI features for social platforms will represent a greater challenge. They will figure on display the name of the counter-movement with the catchword “flying in the dead space of the internet,” which states that nowadays there are no real people online. Now, new research shows that much of last year’s online traffic, over 50%, was made by bots.
