It Costs Just $400 to Build an AI Disinformation Machine

  • 2023-09-13 08:00:00
  • Wired

In May, Twitter was a battleground between a Russian news organization called "Sputnik International" and an account named "CounterCloud". The former published a series of tweets criticizing U.S. foreign policy and attacking the Biden administration, while the latter always seemed to have a prompt response, often accompanied by a link to a relevant news or opinion article. 

Nea Paw, the developer behind the mentioned account, later explained that every single text published or referred to by CounterCloud had been created entirely by an artificial intelligence. Paw's project is currently aimed at highlighting the danger of mass-produced disinformation by AI. 

The CounterCloud project, which opposes Russian messaging, was created using OpenAI and other easily accessible AI tools - at a total cost of about $400.