All the News That's Fit to Fabricate: AI-Generated Text as a Tool of Media Misinformation. Issue 1 (20th November 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kreps, Sarah; McCain, R. Miles; Brundage, Miles
• Is Part Of: Journal of experimental political science. Volume 9:Issue 1(2022)
• Page Start: 104
• Page End: 117
• Publication Date: 2022-11-20
• Subjects: misinformation -- disinformation -- foreign policy -- public opinion -- media; Political science -- Periodicals; Political science -- Research -- Periodicals; Political science -- Methodology -- Periodicals; 320.0724
• DOI: 10.1017/XPS.2020.37
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2052-2630

Abstract

Abstract: Online misinformation has become a constant; only the way actors create and distribute that information is changing. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) such as GPT-2 mean that actors can now synthetically generate text in ways that mimic the style and substance of human-created news stories. We carried out three original experiments to study whether these AI-generated texts are credible and can influence opinions on foreign policy. The first evaluated human perceptions of AI-generated text relative to an original story. The second investigated the interaction between partisanship and AI-generated news. The third examined the distributions of perceived credibility across different AI model sizes. We find that individuals are largely incapable of distinguishing between AI- and human-generated text; partisanship affects the perceived credibility of the story; and exposure to the text does little to change individuals' policy views. The findings have important implications in understanding AI in online misinformation campaigns.