By Alex Omenye
The platform dedicated to countering misinformation with transparent tools, NewsGuard, disclosed that the count of websites utilizing AI-generated content for disseminating fake news has risen to 713 as of February 22, 2024.
The ‘Tracking AI-enabled Misinformation’ report by the company highlighted that most of these websites lack human oversight, exclusively publishing news generated by AI.
These publications span 15 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai, and Turkish.
NewsGuard’s prior report noted a significant increase in AI-generated sites producing false or unverified claims, rising from just under 50 in May to approximately 600 in December 2023, marking a more than tenfold increase in a little over half a year.
The report emphasized the impact of generative artificial intelligence tools on content farms and misinformation spreaders.
NewsGuard’s team identified 713 Unreliable AI-generated news and information websites, labeled “UAINS,” operating across the aforementioned languages.
These sites often adopt generic names, misleading consumers into perceiving them as established news sources. However, they operate with minimal human oversight, publishing articles predominantly or entirely generated by bots, often containing false claims about various subjects, including politics, technology, entertainment, and travel.
Many of these websites rely on a programmatic advertising revenue model, where ads are delivered irrespective of the website’s nature or quality.
The report warned that top brands inadvertently support these sites through programmatic advertising, and unless brands take measures to exclude untrustworthy sites, their ads will continue to appear on such platforms, creating an economic incentive for their large-scale creation.
NewsGuard also identified a Chinese-government run website, not included in the tracker, using AI-generated text to support the false claim that the U.S. operates a bioweapons lab in Kazakhstan infecting camels to endanger people in China.
The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2024 earlier this year highlighted AI-generated misinformation as one of the significant risks countries would face, with 53% of respondents considering it the second-biggest global risk for 2024 after extreme weather.
