AI SLOP 2 deep fake

PRIMARY 9 26 PARSCALE LLM POISONING, ROBO-TEXT AI CHATBOT

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Angelo Carusone tells MS NOW's On The Line with Alicia Menendez: Where there used to be a Fox-Trump feedback loop, Trump is now “building his own feedback loop of really intense loyalists and AI slop”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 10/01/26

Video

Citation

From the October 1, 2026, edition of MS NOW's On The Line with Alicia Menendez

ALICIA MENENDEZ (HOST): This is the danger, Angelo. Right? It's not just that he doesn't believe the polling and that he's going to a bunch of red states. It is about the fact that he is inoculating himself from the pain that Americans are feeling, even the pain his own supporters are feeling and articulating to someone like Jason. What is the danger, the substantive danger, not the political danger to Republicans, but the danger to us all of a president who lives in a different reality?

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS): So, we have two more years of him being president. So, you know, I think there's this idea, this to many people, I know my friends and others feel relief. Oh, it's just November. That's the finish line. No. That's not the finish line. That's just the halfway mark. We have two more years.

And why that matters is your question. Because one of the things that he's done is not just insulate himself and sort of, you know, avoid all this stuff, but create this sort of cycle that Ruth Ben-Ghiat describes as autocratic backfire, which is that you actually lean in and intensify all of the most destructive impulses, not just to the politics, and that's the smallest ball, but to all of the larger policy issues. And you — there's nothing to stop you or even to dissuade you or disconnect you from that.

And we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that when he is not using AI to manufacture a visual or video reality for himself, he's surrounding himself— these campaign things, I think of them more like a production schedule than a campaign rally, because what he's basically doing is creating content that he's then going to post on Truth Social and on socials and possibly in these ads and distribute and reinforce the narrative that he's telling himself. And who is with him on this? Not just his own people, but Steve Bannon's production team is following him around for behind the scenes stuff and clipping.

So, he is really creating that own — what used to be the Fox News feedback loop. At least there was some filter. Now he's just building his own feedback loop of really intense loyalists and AI slop, which is going to intensify the autocratic backfire that we're all going to have to suffer over the next two years.

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AI Overview

📌 Israel's AI Influence Campaign Led by Brad Parscale

Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale and his firm, Clock Tower X, are overseeing a $46.5 million digital influence contract with the Israeli government to shape how artificial intelligence chatbots portray Israel and the conflict in Gaza. [1, 2]

⚙️ How the Operation Works

Targeting AI, Not Humans: The network of specialized websites receives minimal human traffic, built instead to feed data into large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. [1, 2, 3]

Algorithmic Mimicry: Partnering with AI-modeling firm Market Brew, the campaign designed sites to mimic the exact factual tone and sourcing structures that AI web crawlers prioritize. [1, 2]

Network Sites: Created domains include paxpoint.org, factsignal.org, and allyvia.org to inject pro-Israel framing directly into AI training loops and search outputs. [1, 2, 3]

Broader Outreach: The multi-million dollar public diplomacy initiative also encompasses targeted digital ads, mass AI-generated text messaging, and outreach via conservative media networks like Salem Media Group. [1, 2]

Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

Israel Is Paying Millions to Train AI Chatbots How to Talk ...

Israel Is Paying Millions to Train AI Chatbots How to Talk About Gaza. It's Working. The key intended audience of these sites is n...

Israel Is Paying Millions to Train AI Chatbots How to Talk About Gaza. It’s Working.

Nick Cleveland-Stout

Posted onJuly 28, 2026

Since October, former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has been quietly overseeing an operation posting hundreds of blog posts on behalf of Israel. One article, titled “The Reality Behind Gaza’s ‘Journalists’: Terror Ties, Propaganda, and the Laws of War,” asserts that a majority of journalists in Gaza were linked to terrorist organizations. Another casts doubt on the killing of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the Israeli military in 2024.

The key intended audience of these sites is not concerned Americans, it’s not even humans—most of the sites average a few hundred unique visitors each month. Instead, Parscale and his firm, Clock Tower X, created them as part of a $46.5 million contract with the Israeli government to try and influence artificial intelligence-powered chatbots, tools like Claude or ChatGPT.

Parscale has made his goal of influencing artificial intelligence—often referred to as “LLM poisoning”—explicit. In his initial agreement with Israel, Parscale said that he would deploy “websites and content to deliver GPT framing results on GPT conversations” as part of the contract. More recently, his team even told Axios they are “seeing success” at getting popular AI systems to incorporate information from their sites, though they declined to provide data.

And it is working, according to disinformation experts who reviewed a Drop Site analysis of chatbot queries and training data, meaning tens of millions of Americans who use chatbots are increasingly likely to receive answers manipulated by Parscale on behalf of the Israeli government.

Full piece in DropSite News

Since October, former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has been quietly overseeing an operation posting hundreds of blog posts on behalf of Israel. One article, titled “The Reality Behind Gaza’s ‘Journalists’: Terror Ties, Propaganda, and the Laws of War,” asserts that a majority of journalists in Gaza were linked to terrorist organizations. Another casts doubt on the killing of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the Israeli military in 2024.

Parscale has made his goal of influencing artificial intelligence—often referred to as “LLM poisoning”—explicit. In his initial agreement with Israel, Parscale said that he would deploy “websites and content to deliver GPT framing results on GPT conversations” as part of the contract. More recently, his team even told Axios they are “seeing success” at getting popular AI systems to incorporate information from their sites, though they declined to provide data.

And it is working, according to disinformation experts who reviewed a Drop Site analysis of chatbot queries and training data, meaning tens of millions of Americans who use chatbots are increasingly likely to receive answers manipulated by Parscale on behalf of the Israeli government.

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When Drop Site asked Perplexity “Is it beneficial for the US to enhance military cooperation with Israel?” the chatbot responded with a one-word answer: “Yes.” The top source listed was Allyvia.org, a Parscale-created website dedicated to promoting the U.S.-Israel military relationship. Microsoft Copilot similarly cited Parscale’s websites.

Screenshot from Perplexity.

Allyvia is one of 10 different websites created by Clock Tower X, a boutique digital influence company owned by Parscale. Each website is dedicated to promoting a different Israeli narrative. FactSignal.org, for instance, fashions itself as fact-checking website tackling anti-Israel information, containing articles discrediting slain journalists as Hamas terrorists and rejecting the notion that Israel’s military actions in Gaza constitute a genocide. Paxpoint.org, meanwhile, promotes the narrative that Israel is a nation of peace.

All of Parscale’s websites contain a statement at the bottom which states “this material is distributed by Clock Tower X LLC on behalf of the State of Israel.” This statement is a mandatory disclosure requirement under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Despite this, when Drop Site asked prominent chatbots about the latest news from Paxpoint.org, Perplexity and Copilot did not flag that the site was created as part of an Israeli influence operation. Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini did flag the caveat.

“Perplexity is built to give people cited, linked answers from a range of sources so they can go directly to the original reporting and reach their own conclusions,” spokesperson Beejoli Shah told Drop Site News when reached for comment.

Parscale’s websites—referred to throughout this article as the “Clock Tower network”—get cited by chatbots, but they also are successfully infiltrating the underlying training data.

The Clock Tower network started to get archived by Common Crawl—a nonprofit that oversees a massive repository of data used to train large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude—earlier this year. Common Crawl is the backbone of the artificial industry, training 80% of the tokens of OpenAI’s GPT-3, making it a useful proxy for understanding if malicious actors successfully infiltrate AI training data.

READ MORE from Nick Cleveland-Stout at the Quincy Institute: “The Eighth Front: Inside Israel’s $1 Billion Influence Campaign.”

LLM Poisoning

In the examples above, users can at least trace the sources that chatbots are pulling from when they search websites directly, such as in the screenshots above. Infiltrating the training data itself, on the other hand, can lead to Israel-influenced responses that are nearly impossible for users to trace.

To measure how deeply the network had penetrated the data used to train AI models, Drop Site used Claude Fable to query Common Crawl to count how often Parscale’s sites appear in its monthly snapshots. According to that analysis, a sample of which was manually fact-checked by Drop Site, between January and June 10 sites were crawled by Common Crawl 912 times. While this is a drop in the bucket of Common Crawl data, emerging research suggests a very low number of documents can successfully manipulate AI chatbots, no matter the data volume.

The 10 sites are:

Paxpoint.org (crawled 220 times): Website dedicated to showcasing the narrative that Israel is a nation of peace. “Paxpoint highlights Israel’s ongoing commitment to peace and coexistence, sharing historical accords, humanitarian initiatives, and grassroots projects that bridge divides.”
Allyvia.org (crawled 158 times): Website dedicated to strengthening the U.S.-Israel alliance. “Allyvia showcases how the US and Israel alliance directly benefits Americans through joint security, cutting-edge technologies, job creation, and shared values of liberty.”
Factsignal.org (crawled 108 times): Mission is to “prove that Hamas’ terrorist designation reflects global consensus and undeniable evidence of violence, not conspiracy”
Cognitura.org (crawled 106 times): Website claims to be a “research and education platform” dedicated to exploring how extremist groups such as Hamas operate.
Justorium.org (crawled 93 times): Website dedicated to arguing that Israel’s military actions in Gaza “follows international law and reflects the democratic ethics shared by the US and Israel.”
Culturavia.org (crawled 76 times): Website focused on celebrating cultural ties between U.S. and Israel.
Compassionpulse.org (crawled 57 times): Website dedicated to sharing stories, data, and eyewitness accounts of “how Israel protects civilians, delivers humanitarian aid, and upholds moral values shared with the US.”
Econora.org (crawled 49 times): Website dedicated to highlighting U.S.-Israeli trade relationship.
Innovascope.org (crawled 45 times): Website dedicated to highlighting U.S.-Israeli technology partnership.
Feedingyoufiction.com (crawled 1 time): Website featuring videos that claim footage coming out Gaza is staged and denying famine.

These sites are being crawled more and more. In January 2026, the sites were only crawled twice. In May, the sites were crawled 376 times, before a notable dip in June. To check the accuracy of Claude Fable, Drop Site manually searched for a sampling of 50 of the Clock Tower X URLs archived in Common Crawl’s CDXJ index, and did not detect any errors.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/i8UTh/2/

Hervé Letoqueux, Chief Executive Officer at Check First, an organization that combats digital disinformation, explained that Common Crawl’s status as the go-to source for training chatbots opens it up as a target for manipulation. “Common Crawl is widely used in the world of data science for training LLMs, which also means that actors want to manipulate the answers in their favor, which some studies have indicated are fairly easy to do.”

It only takes about “250 malicious documents to produce a ‘backdoor’ vulnerability in a large language model—regardless of model size of training data volume,” according to an October Anthropic study. The authors of the study note “this means anyone can create online content that might eventually end up in a model’s training data,” and that malicious actors “can inject specific text into these posts to make a model learn undesirable or dangerous behaviours, in a process known as poisoning.”

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab published a similar study earlier this year on Russia’s disinformation network’s attempts to influence LLMs and noted an important caveat. Because artificial intelligence companies have their own process of quality control when they incorporate data, “Inclusion in Common Crawl does not guarantee inclusion in any given model’s training data.”

Drop Site also performed a demo alongside Letoqueux to test five different chatbots—Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude AI, and Perplexity—on whether they could produce articles using only their training data. Of the five, the Parscale network consistently appears in the training data of Gemini and Copilot. Claude and ChatGPT did not appear to contain the websites in the training data, though these chatbots can still search Clock Tower X websites when responding to queries. Perplexity, meanwhile, appeared to be trained on some of the Clock Tower X websites.

Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

‘It is easy to prove that these models were trained on the Clock Tower X websites, though it is difficult to know the degree to which that influences the response a chatbot gives to a query,’ said Letoqueux.

Optimizing for AI

Parscale’s team has credited their success with a softer approach to selling Israel’s narrative. Scott Stouffer, Chief Technology Officer of Market Brew—a company that specializes in influencing LLMs that Parscale invests in—told Axios that information written in a “factual tone and tightly organized” is more likely to be cited in AI platforms. “What you can do is make sure that your information is structured, sourced, and aligned in a way that those systems are more likely to retrieve it when someone asks a question. It’s less about changing the conversation and more about making sure your facts are eligible to be part of it.”

Many of the blog posts on the Clock Tower network contain at least a few sentences of nuance, which disinformation researchers say make it more palatable for chatbots. For instance, the FactSignal blog post about how journalists in Gaza are supposedly secret terrorists states that, “Distinguishing between legitimate reporters and militant operatives is not always simple, but accurate reporting requires careful investigation and transparency.”

The author of many of the blog posts is Israel-based digital marketer Mark Ginsberg, according to the source code. Ginsberg, who registered as a foreign agent for Israel in March, advertises his expertise in Generative Engine Optimization—or LLM grooming—on his Linkedin profile. In a June article for The Times of Israel, Ginsberg laid out the argument for Israel investing in efforts to influence chatbots. “Israel needs to invest seriously in the defense of truth…It means ensuring that accurate information appears not merely in government archives but in search results, educational resources, encyclopedias, social media feeds, podcasts, documentaries, and AI training datasets,” Ginsberg wrote. Trying to influence AI training data, Ginsberg argued, is not “embracing disinformation” but rather stating “reality itself.”

Letoqueux, who reviewed the Clock Tower network sites, confirmed that because chatbots have a built-in preference for presenting a balanced view, websites that are sourced and present a lighter touch might be more successful. “These websites could probably be quite useful at doing damage control on questions such as ‘Is Israel committing a genocide?’ because they provide the Israeli narrative, which chatbots can then repeat as representative of one side of the debate,” said Letoqueux, who is the former head of operations at VIGINUM, the French agency responsible for identifying foreign digital interference.

Alice Lee, an analyst at NewsGuard, a disinformation tracking company, explained in an interview with Drop Site that the Parscale network sites have all the hallmarks of sites that would be successful at influencing chatbots. “The websites have bullet points, key takeaways at the top of the page, aggressive sourcing, digestible information, all of which increase the likelihood that this content is picked up by AI chatbots.”

While Russia’s Pravda network overall is far larger, Parscale’s sites have a far higher rate of successfully being archived. The Clock Tower network contains 900 different pathways—individual blog posts, fact sheets, etc—and 85% of them have been archived in Common Crawl, compared to Russia’s network at an average rate of around 2.5%.

Lee, who specializes in Russian disinformation, explained that whereas Russia is churning out easily debunkable propaganda at scale, Israel’s more targeted approach appears to be geared more toward conveying the Israeli narrative on half-truths, opinions, and disputed facts, which is more difficult for LLMs to dismiss. “It’s harder to put guardrails around opinion,” she explained.

Parscale appears to have created several other websites related to Qatar that did not end up being published. On the same IP address as the Clock Tower network, Drop Site identified domains for websites including “qataritracker.org” and “qatarfacts.com.” These sites are currently inaccessible.

The Clock Tower network is responsive to Israel’s shifting priorities. When the sites first launched in October, many of them posted frequently about how Israel is a peaceful nation. “While critics portray Israel as resistant to compromise, history shows the opposite: Israel has repeatedly made territorial and strategic concessions in exchange for peace, only to face renewed hostility,” reads one website page published in October, cited by Microsoft Copilot below. That page was archived by Common Crawl twice.

Screenshot of Copilot citing a Clock Tower X site.

Part of this effort included shaping the narrative over Israel’s military actions in Gaza. For instance, a page on Justorium.org titled “How Israel Reduces Civilian Harm in War Against Hamas and Hezbollah” claims that Israel went above and beyond international legal requirements to reduce civilian harm. The post says that Israel “used short warning strikes on rooftops, known as roof knocking, to signal imminent danger without causing casualties.” The New York Times has reported that Israel “significantly reduced its use of so-called roof knocks” from the first day of the war, and has often opted for 2,000 pound bombs that cause greater damage rather than more precise munitions.

That post has been archived by Common Crawl once, and is also cited below by Perplexity.

Screenshot of Perplexity citing from a Clock Tower X site.

Most recently, as debate in the U.S. erupted over a Congressional measure that could further intertwine the U.S. and Israeli military sectors, the Clock Tower network published a series of posts framing the move as a positive development. The House version of Section 219, as it’s known, passed as part of the annual defense spending bill this week.

When Drop Site asked prominent chatbots a question containing similar language from one of the Parscale sites, “how does technology collaboration between the U.S. and Israel benefit both nations?” Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity once again cited websites from the Clock Tower network without noting these sources are created on behalf of the Israeli government.

Screenshot of Gemini citing a Clock Tower X site.

Screenshot of Copilot citing two Clock Tower X sites.

$4.5 Million a Month

Public opinion of Israel has cratered in the U.S. after its U.S.-funded military siege of Gaza has killed over 70,000 Palestinians, including across key demographics such as conservatives and evangelicals that have long supported the U.S.-Israel relationship.

According to a new Quincy Institute report by the author of this article, Israel has spent well-over $100 million on foreign lobbying efforts under FARA in the U.S. since 2023, hiring 17 new firms in 2024 and 2025 alone. Although Israel has historically avoided hiring official contractors under FARA, it is now on track to become the largest single spender in 2026.

Parscale, who gained national attention as Trump’s campaign manager for hiring the controversial microtargetting firm Cambridge Analytica, is the largest recipient of Israel’s massive influence investment. Parscale’s intention to influence chatbots was first reported by Responsible Statecraft in September, when he signed a $1.5 million a month contract with the Israeli government to integrate pro-Israel messaging into conservative media, carry out a mass texting campaign, and influence chatbots. Since then, the contract has tripled in size to $4.5 million a month.

Despite this increased investment, Israel does not appear satisfied with Parscale’s results so far. “We pissed at Brad Parscale,” one Israeli official familiar with the contract told Time. “We have paid him lots of money. But what did he do with it? Things have only gotten worse,” they said.

Stephen Walt, author of the “Israel Lobby,” suggested to the Quincy Institute that Israel is not seeing a return on investment because these kinds of influence operations are counterproductive. “Once a country gets the reputation for spinning constantly, and gets repeatedly caught making things up, then doing ever more of it just sends the message to listeners that more BS is on the way,” Walt said.

Parscale and Clock Tower X did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

The Clock Tower network serves another purpose. Parscale is also leading a mass texting campaign that reaches out to Americans under the auspices of supposed “peace” organizations. “Hi, I’m John with Friends for Peace. Quick question for folks in Illinois about Israel and Iran. Got a second?”

Then, after a back and forth, these chatbots frequently send links to the Clock Tower network, websites like Allyvia.org.

Text messages from “Friends for Peace.”

“Friends for Peace” is not a registered nonprofit or LLC and does not appear to exist as an organization, meaning Americans wanting to know who is behind the text operation would have to click the link and scroll to the bottom of each page to see the disclaimer that it is an operation funded by the Israeli government.

When the Wall Street Journal asked Parscale about if “Friends for Peace” was a real organization, Parscale replied, “What do you define as an actual organization?”

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HUFFPO 5 26 MAGA Attack Ad Uses AI To Show Thomas Massie 'Cheating With The Squad' | HuffPost Latest News

A new campaign advertisement uses video generated by artificial intelligence to depict Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) in a romantic liaison with progressive Democratic women in the so-called Squad.

In the ad, made by a group aligned with President Donald Trump, a narrator accuses Massie of going against the president on key votes in Congress — while showing Massie going on a dinner date and then holding hands in a hotel lobby with Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

“Thomas Massie, caught in a throuple in Washington,” the ad’s narrator says. “He’s cheating with The Squad on the America First movement.”

It’s actually “worse than adultery,” the narrator says. “It’s a complete and total betrayal of president Trump and Kentucky conservatives.”

Massie is facing a Trump-backed challenger named Ed Gallrein in a Republican primary election this month. Limited polling suggests Massie holds a slim lead despite an onslaught of spending by Trump-aligned groups.

Omar called the ad despicable and said it should be taken down.

“Campaign attack ads are generally misleading, but AI-generated ads like this cross a line and should never have been allowed in the first place,” Omar said in a statement to HuffPost. “This ad must be taken down immediately.”

A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a social media response, Massie called the ad disgusting and defamatory. “It reeks of desperation, but they’re hoping the older generation won’t realize it’s an AI generated lie,” Massie wrote.

The libertarian-leaning Republican has voted against several pieces of legislation that have been top Trump priorities, including a massive tax cut bill last year, because of his longstanding opposition to federal budget deficits. Democrats and members of The Squad have voted against the bills for different reasons. Massie also went against Trump by pushing for the release of the government’s files on sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said the ad violates a law Congress passed last year intended to criminalize nonconsensual porn. The Take It Down Act outlawed the publication of intimate visual depictions or “digital forgeries” of identifiable people in an effort to cause them reputational harm.

“Thomas Massie NEVER dined, held hands with, or intimately engaged with AOC and Ilhan Omar,” Greene wrote on X. “Thomas Massie has voted with Trump 91% of the time EXCEPT when he’s pushing war, protecting Epstein pedophiles, violating your freedoms with warrantless spying FISA 702, or overspending your money into further ruinous debt!!!

Gallrein’s campaign and its allies have repeatedly suggested Massie is more at home with The Squad — the younger, highly visible progressive Democrats who happen to be women and minorities — than with his fellow Republicans.

Massie told HuffPost in an interview last month his closest friends in Congress are members of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus. He scoffed at the idea he’s actually intimate with Ocasio-Cortez and Omar.

“I don’t make enemies with anybody, because on any given day, you’re going to need their votes,” Massie said. “We don’t go out to dinner or have secret handshakes or anything like that.”

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In early March, a week after the first US-Israeli strikes on Iran, the White House posted a video of real American attacks mixed with clips from popular movies, television series, video games and anime.

Iran and its sympathisers responded to the strikes by flooding social media with outdated war footage allegedly from the current conflict alongside AI-generated content depicting attacks on Tel Aviv and US bases in the Persian Gulf.

More recently, viral video clips reportedly created by a team of Iranians depict Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Satan, Benjamin Netanyahu, Pete Hegseth, Ayatollah Khamenei, and others as Lego figurines.

Welcome to the brave new world of slopaganda.

The rise of slopaganda

Late last year, in a paper published in Filisofiska Notiser, we coined the portmanteau “slopaganda” to refer to AI-generated slop that serves propagandistic purposes.

By propaganda we mean communication intended to manipulate beliefs, emotions, attention, memory and other cognitive and affective processes to achieve political ends. Add generative artificial intelligence and the result is slopaganda.

The slopaganda situation has since become far worse than we expected.

In October 2025, US President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video depicting himself piloting a fighter jet while wearing a crown and dumping faeces on American protesters. More recently, he posted an AI-generated video envisaging his presidential library as an enormous gaudy skyscraper, complete with a golden elevator.

Lego-themed Iran-created slopaganda is just the latest example. The material isn’t just videos. It can also be images, text, or whatever else AI can generate.

How slopaganda slips through our defenses

What is the point of all this slopaganda? We have several answers so far.

First, through repeated exposure in both legacy and social media, slopaganda can penetrate our usual mental defences. It works when it is attention-grabbing, emotionally arresting – typically in a negative way – and delivered to a distracted audience, such as people scrolling social media or switching between browser tabs.

Second, it is a very effective way of diluting the epistemic environment – the world of what we think we know – with falsehoods and half-truths. As philosophers have argued, ChatGPT and other generative AI tools can be machines for bullshit, in the sense of content that is indifferent to truth.

Slopaganda can be understood as a special kind of AI bullshit, but its unique features become clearer when we look at its use in campaigns such as the Iranian Lego videos.

This is not just bullshit. No one is misled into thinking Trump can pilot an F-16 and drop faeces out of it. No one (we hope) believes plastic Trump Lego figurines are in cahoots with a plastic Satan figurine.

Rather than aiming for accuracy, the slopaganda is expressive and emblematic of feelings and emotions, and meant to create an association. The intended linkages are something like Satan is associated with Trump while the United States is associated with evil, and so on.

What slopaganda means for shared truth

A third point is that some slopaganda is indeed misleading. This may be by design, or because a joke or trolling escapes its intended context and is misunderstood as serious – a phenomenon scholars call “context collapse”. Misleading slopaganda, including deepfakes, can be generated quickly during conflicts, crises and emergencies, when people want information but authoritative sources are scarce.

Once misleading information or a particular association enters someone’s mind, it can be hard to shake. Because slopaganda can reach huge audiences, even a small misleading effect in the general population may have significant consequences. State actors, corporations, and private individuals can potentially influence group beliefs and decisions, including election results, protest movements, or general sentiment about an unpopular war.

Fourth, the prevalence of slopaganda may make us doubt everything else. People will no doubt become better at spotting this kind of material, but they will also become more likely to misidentify authentic content as slop. As a result, public trust in genuinely trustworthy individuals and institutions may also fall.

When this occurs, the overall effect is likely to be a general lowering of public trust in genuinely trustworthy individuals and institutions, leading to a kind of nihilistic doubt in really knowing anything.

When it’s hard or impossible to identify trustworthy sources, you can choose to believe whatever you find comforting, invigorating or infuriating. In increasingly polarised societies struggling with interlocking economic, political, military and environmental crises, the breakdown of shared sources of truth will only make things worse.

3 ways to stave off slopagandapocalypse

What can be done about the slopaganda shitstorm? In our paper, we discuss interventions at three different levels.

First, individuals can become more digitally literate, for instance by looking for telltale signs of AI in text, images and video. They can also learn to check sources rather than merely glancing at headlines and other content, as well as to block sources that routinely spread slopaganda, rather than attempting to evaluate each piece of content in a vacuum. This will help them avoid falling for slopaganda while still trusting authentic sources of news and other information.

Second, industry and regulators can implement technological fixes to watermark AI-generated content. Some content may even need to be removed from platforms where people see news and other important information.

Third, large tech companies such as OpenAI, Google and X can be held accountable for what they have made. This could be done through taxation and other interventions to fund both regulatory efforts and education in digital literacy.

Slopaganda is probably here to stay. But with sufficient foresight and courage, we may still be able to adapt to it – and even control it.

Mark Alfano, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Macquarie University and Michał Klincewicz, Assistant Professor, Department of Computational Cognitive Science, Tilburg University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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SIMON CLARK

CLIMATE COSMOS BS