FREEDOM ON THE NET 2023 The Repressive Power of Artificial Intelligence These uses of deepfakes are consistent with the ways in which unscrupulous political actors have long employed manipulated news content and social media bots to spread false or misleading information. Generative AI tools will continue to build on such older tactics, but they may never replace them entirely. During Turkey’s elections, a vast progovernment media ecosystem and armies of Twitter bots bombarded the information space with content favoring President Erdoğan and the AKP. One widely circulated video consisted of clips spliced together to falsely depict an outlawed Kurdish militant group supporting opposition presidential candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Erdoğan touted the video as substantially true despite appearing to acknowledge that it may have been doctored. The incident underscored how fabricated content can skew an information space even when it is known to be inauthentic. The growing use and sophistication of generative AI will make such videos seem more realistic and thus more challenging to debunk in the future. The consequences of AI-generated disinformation campaigns Even if deepfakes are obviously fabricated or quickly exposed as such, they still contribute to a decaying information space. They can undermine public trust in democratic processes, incentivize activists and journalists to self-censor, and drown out reliable and independent reporting. AI-generated imagery that sensationalizes outrage on divisive topics can also entrench polarization and other existing tensions within society. In extreme cases, it could galvanize violence against individuals or whole communities. The impact of AI-generated disinformation will deepen as the quality and quantity of the technology’s output continues to exceed the capacity of observers, moderators, or regulators to detect, debunk, or remove it. Like digital repression more broadly, AI-generated disinformation campaigns disproportionately victimize and vilify segments of society that are already under threat. The overwhelming majority of nonconsensual deepfakes featuring sexual imagery target women, often with the aim of damaging their reputations and driving them out of the public sphere. An online campaign using AI-manipulated pornographic videos was used to discredit prominent Indian journalist and government critic Rana Ayyub as early as 2018. During the coverage period, Nina Jankowicz, a US expert on disinformation, was subjected to pornographic 12 @freedomonthenet deepfakes as part of a broader campaign against her and her work. These uses of sexualized deepfakes represent a twisted evolution of a much older practice, the nonconsensual distribution of intimate images of women activists. For example, during the coverage period, a smear campaign that featured nonconsensual intimate imagery of Azerbaijani prodemocracy activists and opposition figures spread across Telegram, TikTok, Facebook, and progovernment news sites. The growing use of AI-generated false and misleading information is exacerbating the challenge of the so-called liar’s dividend, in which widespread wariness of falsehoods on a given topic can muddy the waters to the extent that people disbelieve true statements. For example, political actors have labeled reliable reporting as AI-enabled fakery, or spread manipulated content to sow doubt about very similar genuine content. In April 2023, the Indian state of Tamil Nadu was rattled by a political controversy after leaked recordings captured Palanivel Thiagarajan, a prominent official in the state’s ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party, disparaging his colleagues. Thiagarajan denounced the audio clips as machine generated; independent researchers determined that at least one was authentic. In Ethiopia, after a member of the ruling Prosperity Party was killed in the Amhara region in April 2023, state-affiliated media outlets released audio that purportedly linked a militia group to the killing. An organization released a report alleging that the audio recordings were manipulated using AI; another fact-checking group then accused the organization of being fake, casting doubt on the claim of AI manipulation. Companies like OpenAI and Google have imposed guardrails to reduce some overtly harmful uses of their chatbots. But researchers have identified techniques to break through popular chatbots’ safeguards so that they generate harmful, false, discriminatory, or abusive text, including misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and statements that mirror Russian propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine. Generative AI applications have also produced false and harmful statements about prominent members of civil society. The dangers of AI-assisted disinformation campaigns will skyrocket as malicious actors develop additional ways to bypass safeguards and exploit open-source models, and as other companies release competing applications with fewer protections in place. #FreedomOnTheNet