Joshua Nieubuurt | Propaganda in Focus
In the very near future disinformation will target you autonomously in fractions of a second. As the quantum computing age draws near, Baudrillard’s notion of hyperreality will coalesce with Edward Bernays’ notion of a crystalized public opinion: creating consensus through individualized reality creation. The methods of the deployment of the past will give way to an infrastructural inevitability: GenAI, guided by algorithmic troves of personalized information, will be weaponized into personally targeted mis/disinformation campaigns that cost pennies on the dollar. Propaganda will no longer be an international foxtrot of moving actors and action but will become an autonomous force plowing into the synapses of the masses on micro scales. As this occurs, humanity’s long-smoking gun will be turned back on the gunman — obliterating the boundary between the real and its simulation through recursive, accelerated, and increasingly personal targeted information operations.
Your Data Used on You
This process has already begun and – for the time being – is being spat forth into the world at the speed of an AI prompt. According to the findings of Goldstein et al. (2024), Generative AI is capable of “generating text that is nearly as persuasive for US audiences as content we sourced from real-world foreign covert propaganda campaigns.” In other words, the digital machines we have created to help us are already being used to persuade our ideas and actions. As public facing models increase their aptitude, more advanced private models will likely follow. This extends far beyond text-based modalities and into the realms of photo and video generated by generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) models.
In fact, AI-generated propaganda is already being deployed en masse. The 2024 election in the United States was rife with examples flooding social media feeds and creating alternative narratives to not only the election, but also real-world events. In more recent world events, the conflict between Israel and Iran, and the infamous black bags being thrown from a window of the White House, have also produced increasingly potent misinformation across the web. There are currently varying degrees of virility with AI-generated propaganda. The newness of the technology and the experimentation of finding ways of making it effective to skulk into the minds of people still maintains a firehose approach. Meaning that it is created with a widespread in mind: reach as many people as possible and hope that it lands with some of them. If attempts at virility are stymied – it fails. But what if AI-generated propaganda were to be tailored to individual users en masse? One of the key elements in potentially deploying tailor-made propaganda at scale is already part of how the internet-connected world works: Surveillance Capitalism.
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