Russia Is ‘Grooming’ Global AI Models to Cite Propaganda Sources

Since the 2016 election of Donald Trump, there has been some debate over how effective Russian propaganda has been at swaying the opinions of American voters. It was well-documented back in those days that Russia employed large IT companies, most infamously the anodyne-sounding Internet Research Agency, with the sole remit of churning out divisive, pro-Russia content targeted at Americans, but quantifying the impact has always been imprecise. It surely has some impact, in the very least, at hardening views that conform with ones beliefs. Most people are not going to go through the work of fact-checking everything they read, and X’s community notes system is broken. Either way, the Kremlin continues to employ disinformation, and a new report from NewsGuard has documented the country’s pivot away from directly targeting humans with content and instead going after AI models that many now use to bypass media websites altogether. According to NewsGuard’s research, a propaganda network call ... Read full article.