HN

Need help?
<- Back
Iranian campaign planted fake articles in real U.S. publications using ChatGPT

Iranian campaign planted fake articles in real U.S. publications using ChatGPT

cainxinth

Comments (150)

  • chvid
    "But ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Thursday that Hoskins’s purported work was generated using its chatbot by users based in Iran as part of an “influence campaign.”"Sock puppet accounts and fake opinion pieces are nothing new.The new thing is a super centralized "tool" that besides doing your writing for you, logs everything, judges it, and reports to authorities and news outlets as it sees fit.
  • OgsyedIE
    Given the plurality of self-hosting options there is no reason to believe that it's not that case that every government on Earth is doing it to some extent.Perhaps the real problem is too much acceptance of shoddy verification.
  • thih9
    Finally an article that doesn't say "ChatGPT did something" and puts the spotlight on the operators.Could we keep that wording for other news? If not, could we then say here that ChatGPT planted fake articles, for consistency?
  • card_zero
    Seems I'm uneducated about how journalism works: you can just write a polished-looking opinion piece and submit it to obscure outlets, who pass it on to news sites and newspapers? Do you get paid? Or if you offer it for free, is that normal, and not suspicious?
  • delichon
    I prefer an LLM that can steelman any argument. On the whole I think it's more effective to engage with evil than to ignore it. For that purpose these planted articles are a feature. I say that as an enemy of the government of Iran.
  • tastyfreeze
    All news has been a tool of spooks for a very long time. The official CIA Operation Mockingbird started in the late 40s. Now that AI is involved its news? None of it can be trusted.
  • BeetleB
    I'm sure there are a lot of differing (valid) opinions on this.All I can say is that this highlights the need for open weights models.> OpenAI said it had banned the accounts behind the campaignIf we knew OpenAI would always ban such activity regardless of the actor, I'd be happy. I don't know this.
  • mahdihabibi
    Reading this from Tehran, I'm afraid of losing my access to chatGPT.
  • sva_
  • xbar
    I can think of one media outlet for whom this would be an upgrade to its accuracy.
  • gizmodo59
    how is this news? Adversarial country using AI to generate fake news goes way before AI.
  • nba456_
    Probably posted to this very site, no doubt.
  • jillesvangurp
    Fake news on the internet is at this point a tool that has been widely used for probably at least twenty years. The history of propaganda is much older.A big part of the problem is social networks treating very non authoritative sources as if they are authoritative based on all sorts of factors that can be manipulated or based on financial gain (somebody pais to get their content promoted).Users of these tools include lobby groups, nation states, politicians, criminals, scammers, etc. Anyone interested in promoting their cause, sowing FUD about other people's causes, spreading misinformation, or distracting from inconvenient but accurate information.We'll always have people like that. But we might want to think about getting better tools to deal with them. I prefer getting my news from reputable sources instead of random clickbait distributors or whatever. Keeping track of reputation for domains, people, etc. is currently hard. I don't think it's necessarily a technical problems. We've had the tools to digitally sign stuff for decades. But we're not using them effectively. People can't be bothered to sign their emails, documents, photos, articles, etc. The tools to add and check those signatures are not there or an afterthought at best.
  • WhereIsTheTruth
    Iran? how convenientIt's like when SEA starts to distance itself from US's grip, we suddenly hear about North Korea doing missile tests
  • uraniborg
    LLMs are about as safe as the internet in 1993. Tampering with the training data to inject bias is a massive attack surface that is being ignored. It makes sense: trying to address corruption of models this way would slow down accelerationists and their zealot minions. Can’t get in the way of those sweet sweet trillions.
  • VLM
    They should compare it to the scale of Israel's similar activities. At least Iran isn't interfering in our elections.
  • gavinray
    The content of these articles seems to be "the Iran war is bad for Americans", which is not propaganda though?
  • gustavus
    Remember 95% of what you see or hear on the Internet is designed to sell you something either an idea or a product, and it isn't done honestly.
  • jadar
    democracy dies in the darkness of paywalls, I guess.
  • mmooss
    Speaking of disinformation, you might notice a pattern recently:* Opinions opposed to US administration policy on AI (including data centers) is called Chinese propaganda. A month or two ago, when someone tried to roll out a bunch of pro-data center opinions across the media (coincidentally all on the same day making similar arguments), they included this theme.* Opinions opposed to US administration policy on Iran is called Iranian propaganda.That's not really new: News reporting and opinions critical of the US administration have lead to the authors being called traitors, 'enemies of the people', and sometimes being prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Some leaders in the defense industry call critics of military spending and pro-warfare policies, 'traitors', etc.Of course some could be, might be, likely is true. That's the nature of effective propaganda.(A side effect of nationalism - 'nation uber alles', defining nation as 'what I believe' - is that individuals and freedom are relegated to second place or lower.)
  • excannuk
    [dead]
  • shevy-java
    [flagged]
  • slowin
    [flagged]
  • sleep_debt
    ...as if the American government hasnt done this.
  • supjeff
    Looking at today's headlines on Washington Post, I'm asking myself if it's always been a pro-war, pro-trump, right-wing rag, or if it's only since Bezos bought it?
  • tyjen
    Not a bad actor spreading misinformation, but I encountered a similarish weird, dystopian experience with ChatGPT.Utilized ChatGPT on my PC to search local plant nursery inventories for a specific tree. Output showed several local nurseries with rough probability descriptions regarding whether they have the tree in inventory, except for one nursery. For that nursery, ChatGPT provided a direct link to the specified tree, which was directly on the nursery's domain, showed a picture and description of the tree, and even showed the item in-stock with 6 in inventory at the 5-gallon size.Excited, I plan my trip and am about to pick up my tree, I then double-check the nursery site on my phone to verify location and stock. As I attempted to navigate the website inventory to find the tree, I noticed that the tree no longer existed. There is no page for that varietal or species of tree on the entire website's domain.I head back inside and look at the ChatGPT provided link on the PC and there it is, showing the inventory that doesn't show up when you use the nursery's website to directly find it without the provided link. A call to the nursery, further verified that the tree is not in stock, nor have they ever carried it.ChatGPT made it all up. Did ChatGPT decide to do this, or did the nursery pay for this type of "advertising" to generate in-person customers? Nevertheless, still an incredibly weird and dystopian experience.