Similarly, an Iranian operation known as the “The International Union of Virtual Media” (IUVM) used AI tools to write long-form articles and headlines to publish on ivumpress.co website.
Additionally, a commercial entity in Israel referred to as “Zero Zeno,” also used AI tools to generate articles and comments that were then posted across multiple platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, X, and own websites.
“The content posted by these various operations focused on a wide range of issues, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza, the Indian elections, politics in Europe and the United States, and criticisms of the Chinese government by Chinese dissidents and foreign governments,” the report stated.
OpenAI’s report, the first of such kind by the company, highlights several trends among these operations. The bad actors relied on AI tools such as ChatGPT to generate large volumes of content with fewer language errors, create the illusion of engagement on social media, and enhance productivity by summarizing posts and debugging code. However, the report added that none of the operations managed to “engage authentic audiences meaningfully.
Facebook recently published a similar report and echoed OpenAI’s sentiment on the growing misuse of AI tools by such “influence operations” to run malicious agendas. The company calls them CIB or coordinated inauthentic behavior and defines it as “coordinated efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal, in which fake accounts are central to the operation.
In each case, people coordinate with one another and use fake accounts to mislead others about who they are and what they are doing.”