China covertly using ChatGPT for propaganda posts on social media

OpenAI has found evidence of China covertly using ChatGPT to create propaganda posts on social media, and to conduct digital surveillance. Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, and X were among the platforms targeted …

The AI company says it has blocked ten of these operations, four of which “likely originated in China.” Other countries believed to be abusing the service in this way are Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

NPR reports that the chatbot was used both to generate original posts, and to create engagement with them. In one amusing twist, the perpetrators also used ChatGPT to create their own performance reviews for the abuse of the tool.

Chinese propagandists are using ChatGPT to write posts and comments on social media sites — and also to create performance reviews detailing that work for their bosses, according to OpenAI researchers […]

“What we’re seeing from China is a growing range of covert operations using a growing range of tactics,” Ben Nimmo, principal investigator on OpenAI’s intelligence and investigations team, said on a call with reporters about the company’s latest threat report […]

One Chinese operation, which OpenAI dubbed “Sneer Review,” used ChatGPT to generate short comments that were posted across TikTok, X, Reddit, Facebook, and other websites, in English, Chinese, and Urdu. Subjects included the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development — with posts both praising and criticizing the move — as well as criticism of a Taiwanese game in which players work to defeat the Chinese Communist Party. In many cases, the operation generated a post as well as comments replying to it.

Ironically, the AI-generated performance reviews provided insights into the operations.

The actors behind Sneer Review also used OpenAI’s tools to do internal work, including creating “a performance review describing, in detail, the steps taken to establish and run the operation,” OpenAI said. “The social media behaviors we observed across the network closely mirrored the procedures described in this review.”

Another element involved using ChatGPT to generate emails to journalists, analysts, and politicians in an apparent intelligence-gathering operation.

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