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Battling disinformation with cryptography

Nature Machine Intelligence volume 5, pages 1056–1057 (2023)Cite this article

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Information and communication technologies have led to an unprecedented surge of disinformation1, interfering in areas from democratic elections to armed conflicts. With the broad diffusion of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Dall-E and Midjourney, the situation may become even worse. These tools make it easy and cheap to fabricate authentic-looking content, such as images, audio files and videos (‘deep fakes’)2 that spread falsehoods and sway public opinion. AI tools can also facilitate automated micro-targeting of users at scale, trapping them in tight echo chambers and filter bubbles3. Without countermeasures, it will be increasingly difficult to find the needle of truth in a haystack of AI-generated and AI-distributed lies.

Unfortunately, today’s approaches and tools may not be sufficient to battle disinformation. Content moderation has limitations and whether stricter regulation of content providers will be effective is unclear2. AI-based detection is error-prone4 and will probably remain so in the future, not least because generative AI algorithms can in response be trained to evade these detection mechanisms5.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded in part by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) and PayPal, PEARL grant reference 13342933 (to G.F.), as well as by the FNR through the PABLO project, grant reference 16326754.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg

    Johannes Sedlmeir, Alexander Rieger, Tamara Roth & Gilbert Fridgen

  2. Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA

    Alexander Rieger & Tamara Roth

Authors
  1. Johannes Sedlmeir
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  2. Alexander Rieger
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  3. Tamara Roth
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  4. Gilbert Fridgen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexander Rieger.

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Competing interests

J.S. and G.F. are supported by PayPal and the Luxembourg National Research Fund FNR. PayPal’s financial support is administered via the FNR, and by contractual agreement, PayPal has no involvement in J.S. and G.F.’s research. A.R. and T.R. declare no competing interests.

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Sedlmeir, J., Rieger, A., Roth, T. et al. Battling disinformation with cryptography. Nat Mach Intell 5, 1056–1057 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-023-00733-2

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