Advancements in generative AI tools have brought with them the assumption that higher-quality and more sophisticated AI-enabled influence operations would not be far behind. The fear? The ability to deceive and mislead audiences, especially around elections.
NBC News featured Graphika's new report on that subject, Cheap Tricks: How AI Slop Is Powering Influence Campaigns, in a story on how large online propaganda campaigns are flooding the internet with AI slop.
The article highlights that "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."
"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," NBC reported.
In an interview, Graphika analyst and Cheap Tricks report co-author Dina Sadek told NBC News that the dangers are still real.
"Influence operations have been systematically integrating AI tools, and a lot of it is low-quality, cheap AI slop," Sadek said. "It might be low-quality content, but it’s very scalable on a mass scale. They’re able to just sit there, maybe one individual pressing buttons there, to create all this content."
Graphika delivers continuous insights into evolving online threats and narratives. Subscribers receive ongoing monitoring of the narratives promoted and tactics used by actors, as well as the communities engaging with them, across a wide range of social platforms and online sources.
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