Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review article

Misinformation reloaded? Fears about the impact of generative AI on misinformation are overblown | HKS Misinformation Review 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 Skip to main content 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 Article Metrics

 55

 CrossRef Citations

 2352 PDF Downloads

 43069 Page Views

 
 
 Many observers of the current explosion of generative AI worry about its impact on our information environment, with concerns being raised about the increased quantity, quality, and personalization of misinformation. We assess these arguments with evidence from communication studies, cognitive science, and political science. We argue that current concerns about the effects of generative AI on the misinformation landscape are overblown. 

 

 
 By

 
 Felix M. Simon Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK

 Sacha Altay Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Switzerland

 Hugo Mercier Institut Jean Nicod, Département d’études cognitives, ENS, EHESS, PSL University, CNRS, France 

 
 

 Image by Alan Warburton on Better Images on AI 

 

 Introduction 

 Recent progress in generative AI has led to concerns that it will “trigger the next misinformation nightmare” (Gold & Fisher, 2023), that people “will not be able to know what is true anymore” (Metz, 2023), and that we are facing a “tech-enabled Armageddon” (Scott, 2023). 

 Generative AI systems are capable of generating new forms of data by applying machine learning to large quantities of training data. This new data can include text (such as Google’s Bard, Meta’s LLaMa, or OpenAI’s ChatGPT), visuals (such as Stable Diffusion or OpenAI’s DALL-E), or audio (such as Microsoft’s VALL-E). The output that can be produced with these systems at great speed and ease for a majority of users is, depending on the instructions, sufficiently sophisticated that humans can perceive it as indistinguishable from human-generated content (Groh et al., 2022). 

 According to various voices, including some leading AI researchers, generative AI will make it easier to create realistic but false or misleading content at scale, with potentially catastrophic outcomes for people’s beliefs and behaviors, the public arena of information, 1 We understand the public arena to be the common but contested mediated space in which different actors exchange information, discuss matters of common concern, and which mediates the relation between different parts of society (Jungherr & Schroeder, 2021a). and democracy. These concerns can be divided in four categories (Table 1).

 Argument Explanation of claim Presumed effect Source 1. Increased quantity of misinformation Due to the ease of access and use, generative AIs can be used to create mis-/disinformation at scale at little to no cost to individuals and organized actors Increased quantity of misinformation allows ill-intentioned actors to “floo

... (truncated, 37 KB total)