Online actors linked to the Chinese government are increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence to target voters in the U.S., Taiwan and elsewhere with disinformation, according to new cybersecurity research and U.S. officials.
The Chinese-linked campaigns laundered false information through fake accounts on social-media platforms, seeking to identify divisive domestic political issues and potentially influence elections. The tactics identified in a new cyber-threat report published [April 5] by Microsoft are among the first uncovered that directly tie the use of generative AI tools to a covert state-sponsored online influence operation against foreign voters. They also demonstrate more-advanced methods than previously seen.
Accounts on X—some of which were more than a decade old—began posting last year about topics including American drug use, immigration policies, and racial tensions, and in some cases asked followers to share opinions about presidential candidates, potentially to glean insights about U.S. voters’ political opinions.
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Separately, Microsoft said it detected a surge of more-sophisticated AI tools in the January presidential election in Taiwan, including an AI-created fake audio clip of a former presidential candidate endorsing one of the remaining candidates. That marked the first time the technology giant’s researchers on threats had seen a nation-state actor using AI to attempt to influence a foreign election.
