• WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Probably mostly fake social media profiles and YouTube/Tiktok AI slop.

    You could use it to create hundreds of real-looking fake accounts on reddit or other social media site. OpenAI’s site doesn’t have this kind of fake user function built into its app, but it should be easy enough with an API. Just have a bot randomly scroll reddit’s most popular posts. Then have it find the most popular comments on those posts over a certain length. Feed the text of that comment to OpenAI, instructing the LLM to make a disagreeing/concurring/answering reply. Then have the bot post OpenAI’s output as a comment on reddit. Have each account comment not at superhuman speed, but at the speed that a normal human user would post.

    Use these tools to build up an arsenal of hundreds, perhaps thousands or even tens of thousands of sockpuppet accounts. Each will have years of post history behind them, so they will pass typical subreddit filters like “account must be this old or have X comment karma” to post. Just keep these bots constantly running and available.

    Then, when you want to use them, use them. Don’t even dramatically switch their persona. Want to use your bot network for politics? Have your 10,000 fake users mostly comment on random banal stuff. But every 10th post or so have them post a comment for whatever politician or cause you support. You might even have them regularly post content of that political persuasion as a normal part of their operation. Same thing with advertising. Have them mostly post random stuff, but have them occasionally post a glowing review for a product, film, or service.

    The real use for OpenAI’s software is as a vector for very effective and difficult to detect and filter astroturfing campaigns. Hell, just getting your name out there can be advantageous. Are you a nobody, but with a lot of cash, that wants to launch a political career? Higher such a bot net to sprinkle your name across social media. Even if all the bots do is mention you, neither praising or condemning, it gets your name out there. The next election cycle, when people start talking about potential primary candidates for a particular office, real people will suggest your name, simply because they heard it somewhere. Name recognition is a powerful thing.

    • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 days ago

      even russian influence campaigns don’t do it this way. it’s probably a split between this kind of thing being too expensive (and they’re using underpaid interns) and accounts being too disposable (you can burn it all after desired effect is achieved)

      • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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        2 days ago

        they literally did actually

        At the direction of, and with financial support from, the GRU, CGE and its personnel used generative AI tools to quickly create disinformation that would be distributed across a massive network of websites designed to imitate legitimate news outlets to create false corroboration between the stories, as well as to obfuscate their Russian origin. CGE built a server that hosts the generative AI tools and associated AI-created content, in order to avoid foreign web-hosting services that would block their activity. The GRU provided CGE and a network of U.S.-based facilitators with financial support to: build and maintain its AI-support server; maintain a network of at least 100 websites used in its disinformation operations; and contribute to the rent cost of the apartment where the server is housed. Korovin played a key role in coordinating financial support from the GRU to his employees and U.S.-based facilitators.

        that’s news not socials, but we are seeing LLMs deployed by social media bot networks

        • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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          2 days ago

          i think it’s only a small part of their efforts and relatively recent one. i suspect they did their preparations to 2024 american elections and some elections in europe (at minimum romania) the old, manual way https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/21537107 what do you need these permanent chatgpt-based accounts if investigation finds them in a week, making them useless forever? they have adapted to this because this is something that happened to them before