How to deal with influence operations in the era of generative AI

2024 will be a year when we watch over elections in many countries while paying attention to the progress in artificial intelligence (AI), from emulating conversation through natural language generation to creating realistic-looking videos.

Following a previous article in this series by Kousuke Saitou that stated that distorted information can come not only from foreign countries, but can also be produced and sent out within Japan, this article will discuss influence operations in the country.

I will touch on the characteristics of social media, including echo chambers and filter bubbles; how they can lead to polarization; emerging technologies like generative AI that have a high affinity with social media; and Japan’s unique media literacy.