China will use AI to disrupt elections in the US, South Korea and India, Microsoft warns - eviltoast

Beijing did a test run in Taiwan using AI-generated content to influence voters away from a pro-sovereignty candidate

China will attempt to disrupt elections in the US, South Korea and India this year with artificial intelligence-generated content after making a dry run with the presidential poll in Taiwan, Microsoft has warned.

The US tech firm said it expected Chinese state-backed cyber groups to target high-profile elections in 2024, with North Korea also involved, according to a report by the company’s threat intelligence team published on Friday.

“As populations in India, South Korea and the United States head to the polls, we are likely to see Chinese cyber and influence actors, and to some extent North Korean cyber actors, work toward targeting these elections,” the report reads.

Microsoft said that “at a minimum” China will create and distribute through social media AI-generated content that “benefits their positions in these high-profile elections”.

  • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    It’s super targeted.

    Exactly, and that’s also why it’s so effective. You can say whatever lies you like if you only say them to the people who will lap it up, there’s and no chance for anyone else to correct them as they don’t even hear the lie.

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      I honestly don’t see how it’s worse than say YouTube, for example. Instead of spoonfeeding conspiracy shit to everyone, it only ends up with the tiny pool who wants it. Youtube on the other hand pushes right wing BS to me every third recommendation.

      • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        Agreed. I could argue that facebook is even more targetted as well. I never understood why tiktok gets so much more hate than the rest.

        • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          This is unrelated to the actual topic, but the tiktok ads can be kind of ferocious. I like to turn it into a game of how quick I can swipe through ads off less than a second of image recognition before skipping real content… I call it the tiktok tax. There is a lot of reasons to hate tiktok, but they are never what people focus on lol.

      • jkrtn@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        I wish YouTube were forced to stop that shit also. Let’s throw Facebook in there too.

      • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
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        7 months ago

        Same. I use YouTube for fix-it and hobby videos, occasionally a game review. I get all sorts of right wing bullshit videos suggested to me. The right is spending a lot of money to steer people that way.