HONG KONG – Various versions of the pro-democracy protest anthem “Glory to Hong Kong” were unavailable on Apple’s iTunes Store, Spotify, KKBOX, Facebook, and Instagram’s Reels on Wednesday, June 14, after the government sought an injunction banning the song outright.

A Reuters search for the song’s Chinese title on Apple’s iTunes Store and KKBOX and a search for the song’s English title on Facebook and Instagram’s Reels only showed a Taiwan version of the song by Taiwanese rock band The Chairman.

The song was the unofficial anthem of Hong Kong’s 2019 sometimes violent pro-democracy street protests.

Various versions of the song released by the creator “ThomasDGX & HongKongers” on Spotify were no longer available.

Spotify said the song was taken down by the distributor, not by its platform.

DGX Music, the music group behind the song, said on their Facebook page that they “are dealing with some technical issues unrelated to the streaming platform”.

“Sorry for bringing the temporary impact. Thank you every audience!” DGX Music wrote.

The injunction application comes after “Glory to Hong Kong” was played mistakenly at several international events, including a Rugby Sevens game and an ice hockey competition.

The song was banned in schools in 2020 after China imposed a national security law on the financial hub cracking down on dissent.

The city’s leader, John Lee, said in a regular government press conference on Tuesday that the song was “not compatible with the national interest”.

“Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has a duty and obligation to safeguard national security, and we should do it proactively and also preventively,” Lee said.

The head of Amnesty International’s China team, Sarah Brooks, said in a statement that “a song is not a threat to national security, and national security may not be used as an excuse to deny people the right to express different political views.”

Hong Kong returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997 with the guarantee its freedoms, including freedom of speech, would be protected under a “one country, two systems” formula. Critics of the national security law say those freedoms have eroded swiftly.

According to a writ seen by Reuters, the government seeks to ban performing and disseminating of the song, including online, its melody and lyrics and any adaptations.

The writ also listed 32 YouTube videos related to the song, including instrumental and sign-language versions. The application for an interim injunction will be heard by the High Court on July 21.

The government asked anyone who opposes the injunction to contact police by June 21 and provide their name, address, telephone number and identity card number.

“Glory to Hong Kong”, including its various versions, dominated the top 10 in Apple’s Hong Kong iTunes Store chart as people rushed to buy the song after the government announced its bid to ban it.

Overseas Hongkongers have launched a global appeal to radio stations around the world to broadcast the song. Radio stations in Australia, France, Ukraine, Denmark and Estonia have played the song.

Apple, KKBOX and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Meta, which owned Facebook and Instagram, has declined to comment.

Hong Kong does not have its own anthem. “Glory to Hong Kong” has been played mistakenly instead of the Chinese national anthem “March of the Volunteers”. The Asia Rugby Association blamed “a simple human error” for its mistake.

Hong Kong’s security chief said in December Google had refused to change its search results to display China’s national anthem instead of “Glory to Hong Kong” when users searched for Hong Kong’s national anthem, expressing “great regret” at the decision. – Rappler.com

The subreddit protests follow an announcement by Reddit in April that it would be charging about $0.24 for every 1,000 API calls or approximately under $1 per user every month.

The protest action by the subreddits started on Monday, June 12, and is likely to affect many Reddit users. Some subreddits, such as r/Music, r/gaming, and r/science have millions of subscribers, so the impact of a short-term or, in the case of some subreddits, an indefinite shutdown is palpable.

API changes spark protest

The API changes include charging developers to access the API and make API calls to request information for app users.

According to a Reuters report, the move to charge for the API calls is partly due to generative AI, as subreddits have a lot of data that could potentially make training tools like ChatGPT easier. Thus, using Reddit’s API for that purpose would allow AI companies to directly find and collate data for training purposes.

Reuters added that Steve Huffman, Reddit’s CEO, said in an interview with the New York Times in April the “Reddit corpus of data is really valuable.” Huffman does not want to “need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”

Must Read

Reddit wants AI companies to pay up for using their content

One third-party app developer – Christian Selig of Apollo – says it would cost about $20 million a year to keep running, based on the pricing details given out. Apollo users made some 7 billion API calls in a month on the app.

As a result of the API pricing changes, Selig said he would shut down Apollo on June 30. Other third-party app developers have followed suit with similar announcements as they cannot afford the costs.

This would leave Reddit’s own application as the beneficiary of such a shutdown, but with many caveats besides.

Affecting communities at large

Some of those affected by the shutdown of third-party apps include the volunteer moderators who use third-party apps to make it easier for them to moderate the communities they manage, as well as those with physical handicaps who use third-party apps for more reliable access.

According to a post on r/save3rdpartyapps, the shutdown of such apps would force them to use an inferior app – Reddit’s own first-party application – that doesn’t have the same accessibility features other apps provided.

“We were assured that this decision’s damage to handicap accessibility was an unintended side effect- though not given an actual apology for it – and told that ‘non-commercial, accessibility-focused apps and tools will continue to have free access’. This neatly omits the fact that many of Reddit’s disabled users depend on the accessibility features of apps which are not specifically ‘accessibility-focused’, but still have superior accessibility features to the official app – many of which have already announced their shutdown,” the post notes.

“I really hope Reddit listens,” Selig wrote on a post thanking people for supporting the Reddit blackout.

“I think showing humanity through apologizing for and recognizing that this process was handled poorly, and concrete promises to give developers more time, would go a long way to making people feel heard and instilling community confidence,” he added. – Rappler.com

“YouTube’s reckless and irresponsible decision will invite further democratic decay and potential violence, and we urge them to reconsider this policy,” Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said in a statement.

YouTube said on Friday the platform would stop removing content that might have spread false claims related to US presidential elections in 2020 and before.

The platform said that while removing the content did curb “some misinformation, it could also have the unintended effect of curtailing political speech.”

Biden’s opponent, former President Donald Trump, has falsely claimed that the election was marred by widespread fraud. Trump supporters attempted to contest the result in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol.

Munoz noted that YouTube’s policy change did “not erase” the fact that Biden fairly won the 2020 presidential election and said that social media companies had played a role in spreading lies in 2020.

Biden, a Democrat, is running for re-election in 2024, and Trump, a Republican, is seeking his party’s nomination to take on Biden again. – Rappler.com

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said that while social media offers some benefits, there are “ample indicators that social media could also harm children’s well-being.”

“We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis – one that we must urgently address,” Murthy said.

Social media use may cause and perpetuate body image issues, affect eating behaviors and sleep quality, and lead to social comparison and low self-esteem, especially among adolescent girls, the advisory said, citing responses from a survey conducted among adolescents.

Adolescents who spend more than three hours per day on social media face double the risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes, such as symptoms of depression and anxiety, according to the advisory.

Most adolescents say social media helps them feel more accepted, more supported during tough times, more connected to their friends, and more creative, the advisory also said.

It said policymakers should strengthen safety standards in ways that enhance those benefits for children of all ages, while noting that inappropriate and harmful content continues to be easily and widely accessible to children.

Tech companies should adhere to age limits to control access to social media platforms, and be transparent about data regarding the impact of their products on children, the advisory urges.

Algorithms and platform design should seek to maximize the potential benefits of social media instead of features designed to make users spend more time on them, it said.

“The first principle of healthcare is to do no harm – that’s the same standard we need to start holding social media platforms to,” said Saul Levin, CEO of the American Psychiatric Association.

The report includes suggestions for what parents, tech companies, as well as children and adolescents, can do to avoid dangerous pitfalls and make the social media experience more positive. They include creation of a family media plan, encouraging of in-person friendships, talking to children about how they spend their time online, and encouraging them to seek help should they need it.

It included a reminder of the new 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline “if you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis.” – Rappler.com

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) launched a special campaign to clean up online information, focusing on social media accounts that disseminate “fake news” and impersonate state-controlled media.

The regulator said it had wiped 107,000 accounts of counterfeit news units and news anchors and 835,000 pieces of fake news information since April 6.

The cleanup comes as China and countries across the globe grapple with an onslaught of fake news coverage online, with many implementing laws to punish culprits.

News dissemination on Chinese social media, however, is already heavily controlled, with platforms like the Twitter-like Weibo favoring topic hashtags produced by state media, while censoring hashtags on issues or incidents considered sensitive by Beijing, even if they go viral.

The CAC said its review found accounts that had disguised themselves as authoritative news media by falsifying news studio scenes and imitating professional news presenters, using artificial intelligence (AI) to create anchors to mislead the public.

Fake news identified covered hot topics such as social incidents and international current affairs, according to a statement the CAC posted on Monday on its website.

“(The CAC) will guide online platforms … to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the majority of internet users to obtain authoritative and real news,” the regulator said, adding it encouraged users to provide leads on counterfeit news and anchors.

China’s government has regularly ordered sweeping measures to scrub the internet of material and language it deemed inappropriate, offensive and a threat to the public and businesses.

Recently, the CAC vowed to crack down on malicious online comments that damage the reputation of businesses and entrepreneurs.

Nascent generative AI technology like ChatGPT has introduced another layer of caution. China recently arrested a man in Gansu province for allegedly using ChatGPT to generate a fake story about a train crash. – Rappler.com

It debuted its Search Generative Experience (SGE) for people by allowing the Google search engine to do a lot of the work required for answering the complex query, “What’s better for a family with kids under 3 and a dog, Bryce Canyon or Arches.”

It came back with a detailed response that tried to answer the question in its totality, rather than letting the human do the work of sifting through information to get to an acceptable answer.

This “AI Snapshot” as its called, summarizes the information it’s indexed to help get at an acceptable answer for the person asking the question.

While Google poses this as being beneficial for people, the company doesn’t quite explain what’s at stake in terms of harms caused by such a product.

I believe it’s a harmful disruption to the way journalism and knowledge-seeking works, leaving publishers and websites filled with the actual information people can use untapped amid Google’s search for profit.

Regurgitation

To recap, Google’s SGE is scouring the internet for information on websites related to one’s query, and then indexing and summarizing the results using its Large Language Models.

Essentially, this means its regurgitating information that’s already available online, changing how search works by keeping one’s attention on the search engine’s AI output, instead of initially listing websites that would help a person make their own decision.

While this can potentially help the person doing the searching – remember that generative AI doesn’t really “know” if its correct, and only vomits what appears to be informative words strung together that can actually be disinformation – this does nothing to compensate the websites that have done the hard work of getting news and helpful data out to the public.

An even more unwelcome change to search behavior

According to 2019 research material from the Nielsen Norman Group, the behavior of people using search engines has already markedly changed from the early days of search, as those websites with the proper search engine optimization (SEO) normally get attention, and most searchers don’t even check beyond page one of a search query.

Once SGE is perfected and becomes more commonplace, it stands to reason you can expect readership on informational websites to further lessen as search engines gobble up the hard work of millions of writers on a myriad of subjects – my own work included – without any compensation, much less fleeting acknowledgement on a sidebar.

Speaking with Futurism, Google had little in response to the question of compensation to publishers for AI-regurgitated content. “We don’t have plans to share on this, but we’ll continue to work with the broader ecosystem,” the Google spokesperson said.

Support human work

As you can expect, that doesn’t quite track well with writers in general.

A lack of compensation can spell the end of an era for digital publishing, and a lack of credit can be disheartening for many people trying to actually get their start as a budding writer earnestly discussing information about their hobbies or interests.

Search was bad enough when algorithms changed the landscape to force people to focus on SEO over quality, informative writing. This new experience, left uncontrolled, may bring about something worse.

You see, if people aren’t enthused about writing anymore, and no one’s left writing about anything, what do you expect will Google’s generative search to be regurgitating information from?

This leads to the possibility that, without any guardrails in place to properly credit and compensate writers and publishers, the search generative experience will eventually stagnate, or even cannibalize itself out of new information on a broader range of topics.

In the end, an uninhibited AI-enabled search experience that does not support the writers it gobbles up information from will spit out disaster for a knowledge-seeking public. – Rappler.com

According to data from Statista, 347 billion emails are sent every day. Since it requires electricity to power not only devices but also data centers that contain these vast amounts of information, internet use is estimated to account for 3.7% of the world’s global CO2 emissions, according to a study from 2019. 

A Yale university study found that if 70 million viewers switched their video streaming quality from high definition to standard, they would reduce monthly greenhouse gas emissions by 3.5 million tons. Further, by switching off video during 15 hours of online meetings, you could save the same amount of emissions created by charging a smartphone every night for 1,151 days.

With some digital decluttering, you can lower your carbon footprint. There are many easy – though initially time-consuming – ways to declog your personal internet ecosystem. 

In addition, by organizing and deleting files, emails, apps, photos, and videos, you can potentially optimize the performance of your devices and minimize background spying.

Review your emails

Do you really need to receive notifications from different online shops or from all of your social media channels? Clear your mailbox of marketing materials and newsletters from last year (and older). Delete and unsubscribe from these so that you can free up your email, making it easier to search for relevant and important communication.  

You can search for long email threads and keep the last email that retains all the information, then delete the rest. Also, you can consider deleting “empty” emails! If you’ve been sent a copy of old emails, and just acknowledged with an “OK” or “Thanks” to an email, those can likely be deleted too depending on the content of the email.

Look through your Sent folder and delete emails that haven’t received any responses after an extended period of time. Also, visit your Drafts folder for any messages you never finished, and consider emptying your Spam folder.

Check your privacy and security settings. Turn off permissions for ads, data collection, and activity tracking by your email service. Also, remove the access permissions from any third-party apps you don’t trust.

Make it a habit to keep attachment file sizes to a minimum and, whenever possible, send compressed files.

Audit the apps

Did you download a free app when you first got your phone and used it once – or maybe even never? Delete apps that you don’t use on a regular basis.

How about streamlining? Ask yourself: do you really need three kinds of project management apps? Or three different browsers? Chances are, the answer is “no.” In thatcase, decide which ones make the cut.

Turn off notifications from apps, and remove access permissions of any third-party apps.

Keep your memories safe

Organize your most important documents and save them to the cloud.  All others, save in external hard drives.

Photos and videos can take up a lot of storage space on your laptop and mobile device. How many of them do you actually look at more than once after you’ve taken them?

You can review and then delete identical images and videos. Even better, save them to an external storage device should you need them later. Just keep your absolute favorites saved in your gadgets, but have offline backups where applicable.

Secure your data

Did you know you can save the data stored in social media accounts?

If you need to, you can request a backup of your data from places like Facebook or Twitter, and then store them in a secure location. Critical messages can also be backed up in this case. 

Scan your folders

Just by categorizing the contents of your folders according to size, you will be able to identify which ones take up huge amounts of space. 

Find duplicate files and leave only one copy. Delete unnecessary files and programs.

If it won’t be critical to your filing system, compress pdf files to further save space. 

Some browsing choices

You can clear the cache, cookies, and history on your browser to make your browsing experience faster in certain respects. 

Meanwhile, know that not all browser extensions are created equal. Some of them can slow down your browsing experience and, in some cases, make you vulnerable to spying. If you are unsure what an extension does or even where it came from, uninstall it.

For the adventurous sort, you can also look into search engines that do more for the environment, like Ecosia and Ekoru, that donate revenue to climate change action.

Sift through social media

Safeguard your privacy by setting your posts to be visible only to your network. Then, review your list of contacts/friends/followers to make sure you are sharing with people whom you know and trust. 

Double-check whether your account has granted access to other apps. Limit which ones can access your information and are allowed to send you notifications.

Turn off permissions for notifications, ads, data collection, and activity tracking.

Performing a digital cleanup of this sort may not be easy or quick, but taking the time to do so will help you manage your devices, files, and security. As an added bonus, it can do a little bit of good for the planet. – Rappler.com

Mari-An Santos is a fellow of the Aries Rufo Journalism Fellowship.

This article is co-published with the UK-based website for Filipinos, TinigUK.com

Play Video

MANILA, Philippines – Social media users criticized podcast production company PumaPodcast and expressed dismay regarding the guesting of Sass Sasot on their podcast due to her status as a disinformation peddler.

One Twitter user said people shoot themselves in the foot when legitimate platforms are shared with individuals “who brought us to this political climate.” The same user added that personalities like Sasot “should be deplatformed, ostracized from public [forums], and her existence be erased from public memory.”

Meanwhile, lawyer Ryan Balisacan said in his tweet that by providing a platform to people like Sasot “without them acknowledging first…all the lies they peddled in the past,” they are being given a “second wind.”

Sasot was a vocal supporter of former president Rodrigo Duterte and is known for amplifying criticisms against other politicians.

For example, when former foreign secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. called former vice president Leni Robredo “boba” (stupid), Sasot and another pro-Duterte influencer, Mocha Uson, amplified this narrative.

In 2017, Sasot threatened the University of the Philippines Cebu-based Union of Progressive Students with a libel suit if the party would fail to provide proof that she spread disinformation. A year later, blogger Jover Laurio of Pinoy Ako Blog filed a civil complaint against Sasot and pro-Duterte influencer RJ Nieto of ThinkingPinoy for alleged violation of the Data Privacy Act.

Addressing the backlash

PumaPodcast addressed the backlash against them following Sasot’s guesting.

PumaPodcast on Saturday, May 13, said it acknowledged the “lack of proper context” in one of its Twitter posts concerning Sasot. In the now-deleted post promoting the show Catch Me If You Can, the company referred to Sasot as a “knowledge influencer.”

“We reassure you that we remain committed to truth and democracy in all the work we produce, even if it means having conversations that are uncomfortable and difficult. We know that we are living in increasingly divided times,” PumaPodcast said in the statement posted on Twitter on Saturday afternoon.

In a two-part episode of Catch Me If You Can, disinformation researcher Jonathan Ong and journalist Kat Ventura talked to Sasot in their podcast that aims to have “conversations with people across the political aisle.” PumaPodcast said the show also attempts to discuss social issues for deeper understanding.

The episode with Sasot focused on Ong’s study “Parallel Public Spheres,” which showed the division among Filipinos, who seem to live in separate “political universes.”

The episode’s description also pertained to Sasot as among the “mega-influencers” who supported Duterte, adding that many academic papers have been written critiquing Sasot for spreading disinformation.

“Is it still possible to rebuild our public spheres – where people can have real conversations, maybe even disagreements, but at the end of the day still treat each other as fellow citizens? We know this goes beyond our disagreements with certain influencers,” the statement on Saturday read.

“This is a question that friends and families grapple with every day. There are no easy answers, but this is our attempt to contribute to solutions and more meaningful interactions around issues that affect us all,” it added.

PumaPodcast also vowed that the hosts will hold guests accountable in their interviews. – Rappler.com

In one video, a man documented himself working in his wood shop. The title card read: “The shop. 5:30pm (PST)”. Quick cutting shots moved between carefully organized close ups of his tools on his workbench to others of him donning various safety equipment before going about his woodwork.

This vignette is part of a trend started by Ava Williams, who posted a video of a train journey from Connecticut to New York in the style of the idiosyncratic director.

@avawillyums With a good imagination, everything is symmetrical. Let a girl day dream! #wesanderson ♬ Obituary – Alexandre Desplat

The short, 24-second video features a number of tropes which are instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with Anderson’s style. There’s the whimsical music of Alexandre Desplat (specifically Obituary, taken from Anderson’s 2021 film, The French Dispatch), symmetrical framing and the blank expression of performers, to name just a few.

Williams’ video created a TikTok trend that has led to a renewed online interest in Anderson’s work as amateurs online Anderson-ify their families, their journeys and more.

The Anderson look and sound

Wes Anderson emerged from Houston, Texas with his modestly budgeted first feature, Bottle Rocket. Starring the three Wilson brothers – Owen (Anderson’s university roommate), Luke and Andrew, the film follows a group of friends planning to pull off a robbery and go on the run.

Play Video

His sophomore film, Rushmore, gained the director greater recognition and was the first of numerous collaborations with actors Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman. It was, however, 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums that earned Anderson an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.

Despite the lukewarm critical reception to his two excellent mid-2000s films, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson’s career has been on somewhat of an upward swing over the past decade. Moonrise Kingdom (2012) was in competition for the coveted Palme D’or award at the Cannes film festival and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) was honored with an Oscar nomination for best picture.

His original circle of on and off-screen collaborators – Murray, Wilson, writing partner Roman Coppola and the cinematographer Robert Yeoman – still remain. But with each film, Anderson widens his circle, drawing in up-and-comers such as Maya Hawke and Timothée Chalamet, as well as established stars like Bruce Willis and Ralph Fiennes.

The work of Wes Anderson is distinct in its look, feel and sound. There is something about this that has made his style so appealing to TikTok creators over his many other acclaimed contemporaries, such as Paul Thomas Anderson or Noah Baumbach.

Anderson’s films look unlike almost anything being released today. The shots are often (but not always) static, with characters and objects positioned centrally, creating a heightened sense of symmetry and mathematical precision.

The color palette of his films tends to be exaggerated. Think the lush reds of the Budapest Hotel’s interior or the vibrant underwater seascapes from The Life Aquatic.

Actions and gestures are regularly performed towards the camera in a highly organized tableau. His films frequently feature slow motion sequences, which are often accompanied by musical deep cuts of popular European rock and pop acts from the 1960s and 1970s.

These elements create a fantastical, often childlike atmosphere to the worlds he creates. The film academic James MacDowell has noted that Anderson’s films encourage “a sense of wonder at a childlike aesthetic of the orderly and the miniature”. This sense is intensified by the fact that many of his films include or revolve around either children or immature adult characters.

Most importantly, this style has remained more or less consistent since the start of his career. This isn’t something he’s adopted for one film, but is instead a recurring and expected feature of each film he directs.

Though he rarely provides a cameo appearance à la Alfred Hitchcock, Anderson’s fingerprints are all over his work and recognisable even to casual viewers.

A natural TikTok aesthetic

For TikTok users, and online content creators more broadly, a recognizable personality or style is important currency. If choosing to imitate the style of a director, who better than one whose work is also immediately recognizable?

It also makes sense that Anderson’s recent films resonate with the younger TikTok demographic, many of whom make fan edits (amateur and unofficial film footage of celebrities taken by a fan) of actors featured in his movies, such as Chalamet.

Play Video

TikTok isn’t the first video-focused social media platform, just the most recent. But it crucially allows users not just to tweet or post about Anderson’s style, or share photographs which mimic his aesthetic, but fully imitate the style of his films in a short-form audio-visual medium.

These Anderson-style TikToks may not fully engage with the tonal complexities of his feature-length work, but are able to easily imitate their visual style at a basic level.

Like all online trends, the longevity of this current fascination with Anderson’s style remains to be seen. This trend comes just ahead of the release of his latest feature, Asteroid City, a sci-fi comedy set in a fictional US desert town.

It’s been given a prime slot in this summer’s release schedule and stars Anderson’s most dizzingly eclectic ensemble yet – Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johannsson, Ed Norton and Margot Robbie are just a few of the 21 names adorning the film’s poster. With this film’s imminent release, the attraction to his work shows no immediate signs of slowing. – Rappler.com

This article originally appeared on The Conversation.

Tom Hemingway, Teaching Fellow in Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick

From simple misunderstandings or misinterpretations of AI outputs, to the active spread of disinformation created with the help of AI, there’s quite a large information battlefield that needs to be covered, likely not just by human fact-checkers.

As such, it’s also a problem that might only be fought at scale by AI as well.

Misreading AI outputs

One of the simplest, yet likely a very pervasive type of AI-enabled disinformation may come in the form of people not understanding how AI outputs from generative AI tools work.

Artificial intelligence isn’t really anything more than a set of tools we ascribe the title of “intelligence” to. For chatbots, the AI assigns values to words and mixes blocks of information together to try and create something cohesive that can pass for a legitimate answer to a given query.

The common caveat for AI chatbot use, however, is to always double-check the work since the answers an AI chatbot can give might not actually be correct at all.

These can range from providing potentially useless code on Google’s Bard chatbot for debugging purposes, to providing “right-seeming” answers to academic questions, or spreading conspiracy theories.

Of note as an example too is the limitation of using an AI travel itinerary maker whose data is based on 2021 information – it will ultimately require you to do the work anyway of finalizing everything based on currently available information. You just added an extra step to get a better idea of the lay of the land.

This “misreading” of AI-enabled outputs requires a warning for users of AI tools, which means the humans seeking help from chatbots and other generative AI should necessarily be savvy about how they find information to corroborate claims by AI.

Active disinformation

Aside from the unintentional blunders caused by attributing truth to AI-enabled information outputs, there’s also the shadier side of things that need to be discussed.

Active disinformation can now occur on a grander scale thanks to AI-assisted tools such as AI image manipulation and voice cloners to create convincing fakes of people’s faces and voices.

These are used to not only spread fake things on the internet – such as made-up images of the Pope in a coat or of Donald Trump getting arrested – but are also being used in convincing financial scams.

In a New York Times report on AI-enabled disinformation using chatbots, Gordon Crovitz, a co-chief executive of NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation, said that “Crafting a new false narrative can now be done at dramatic scale, and much more frequently – it’s like having AI agents contributing to disinformation.”

The report mentioned researchers were able to convincingly create pieces of disinformation, such as conspiracy theories, that were augmented with improved writing and style changes to seem more legitimate and believable.

Fighting back?

This begs the question, “How does one fight back against such rampant misuse of AI for disinformation?”

For some the answer is to use – to use a term very lightly – “good” AI to clean up the disinformation actively created by “bad” AI and unscrupulous people.

But as the Chicago Booth Review pointed out in a January thought piece, there’s no easy way to create an AI-enabled fake news detector, because it can only go so far as to create something that identifies what humans perceive to be fake news.

While we could train the data to try and spot fake news, it would need for us to determine what is real news and what is fake news. But we already fail at that on a human level, so how can we train the AI properly?

Said the writers of the thought piece, “Ideally, our training data set would include input data matched to output labels of real or fake. But the problem is we don’t actually know which items are real or fake. We don’t know the ground truth; we only know what humans judge to be real or fake. Our label is a label of human judgment.”

Ultimately, fighting disinformation at scale means relying on human ingenuity to fight a war it may not be able to win, to be constantly alert for falsehoods on the internet and in the real world, because we might not know when AI-enabled disinformation can strike next – at least, until we get proper guardrails in play and get rules enforced on the development of AI and its acceptable uses.

Maybe then will we have a fighting chance against the monster that’s been created. – Rappler.com