Gird Yourself for the Coming Avalanche of Pro-Trump A.I. Propaganda

And most people would never be the wiser, just like the millions of Americans who interacted with Putin’s English-proficient pro-Trump and anti-Hillary IRA trolls in 2016.

This isn’t a hypothetical concern. OpenAI, an American A.I. research firm, recently announced it had closed the accounts of five different state actors using its systems for nefarious, presumably criminal, purposes. Countries like Russia, China, and Iran, however, have the resources to pull this off without having to rely on U.S.-based commercial A.I. companies or their products.

Last year, for example, Microsoft discovered China using A.I. deepfakes and human-seeming posts across social media claiming that the 2023 fires on Maui, Hawaii, were ignited intentionally by the U.S. government, as well as promoting strife in Taiwan ahead of that nation’s elections. Some speculate it was a practice run for this fall in our country.