Political Science

How persuasive is AI-generated propaganda?

J. A. Goldstein, J. Chao, et al.

Can AI write persuasive propaganda? In a preregistered survey experiment of US respondents, researchers found that GPT-3 davinci can produce highly persuasive news articles—sometimes as persuasive as foreign propagandists—especially when prompts are edited or outputs curated. The study, conducted by Josh A. Goldstein, Jason Chao, Shelby Grossman, Alex Stamos, and Michael Tomz, suggests propagandists could use AI to create convincing content with limited effort.... show more

Abstract

Can large language models, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), generate persuasive propaganda? We conducted a preregistered survey experiment of US respondents to investigate the persuasiveness of news articles written by foreign propagandists compared to content generated by GPT-3 davinci (a large language model). We found that GPT-3 can create highly persuasive text as measured by participants’ agreement with propaganda theses. We further investigated whether a person fluent in English could improve propaganda persuasiveness. Editing the prompt fed to GPT-3 and/or curating GPT-3’s output made GPT-3 even more persuasive, and, under certain conditions, as persuasive as the original propaganda. Our findings suggest that propagandists could use AI to create convincing content with limited effort.

Publisher

PNAS Nexus

Published On

Feb 20, 2024

Authors

Josh A. Goldstein, Jason Chao, Shelby Grossman, Alex Stamos, Michael Tomz

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae034