According to Southern Metropolis Daily, a recent typical case announced by the Cybersecurity Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security reveals a concerning new model of online misinformation. The public security authorities in Guangzhou, Guangdong, successfully cracked a criminal gang that used artificial intelligence tools to produce false information on a large scale, arresting 6 criminal suspects. The gang aimed to earn traffic revenue from online platforms and employed meticulously planned criminal tactics: recruiting part-time workers to register social media accounts, using AI tools to quickly rewrite popular articles, and batch publishing false information. Statistics show that the gang has published more than 500,000 pieces of traffic-driving graphic information.

U.S. President Biden issued an AI executive order aimed at addressing challenges in the tech sector, one of which is how to distinguish the authenticity of images. The order calls for the development of digital watermark standards to help users identify genuine images and their owners. Experts indicate that digital watermarking is not the only solution to the misinformation problem and that there are risks of it being bypassed.

In just two months, developers used OpenAI tools to build an AI propaganda machine aimed at demonstrating the dangers of mass production of misinformation by AI. The developers did not deploy the model out of ethical concerns.