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https://theconversation.com/world-first-social-media-wargame-reveals-how-ai-bots-can-swing-elections-273358>
"On December 14 2025, a terrorist attack occurred at Bondi Beach in Sydney
Australia, leaving 15 civilians and one gunman dead. While Australia was still
reeling in shock, social media saw the rapid spread of misinformation generated
and powered by generative artificial intelligence (AI).
For example, a manipulated video of New South Wales Premier Chris Minns claimed
one of the terrorists was an Indian national. X (formerly Twitter) was awash
with celebrations of the hero defender “Edward Crabtree”. And a deepfake photo
of Arsen Ostrovsky, a noted human rights lawyer and survivor of Hamas’ October
7 attack in Israel, depicted him as a crisis actor with makeup artists applying
fake blood.
This is an unfortunately common occurrence. From Bondi to Venezuela, Gaza and
Ukraine, AI has supercharged the spread of online misinformation. In fact,
around half of the content you see online is now made and spread by AI.
Generative AI can also create fake online profiles, or bots, which try to
legitimise this misinformation through realistic-looking social media activity.
The goal is to deceive and confuse people – usually for political and financial
reasons. But how effective are these bot networks? How hard is it to set them
up? And crucially, can we mitigate their false content through cyber literacy?
To answer these questions, we set up
Capture the Narrative – the world’s
first social media wargame for students to build AI bots to influence a
fictional election, deploying tactics that mirror manipulation of real social
media."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
