Artificial Intelligence software is quickly becoming mainstream. With AI art generators like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, people are able to easily make AI-generated content, such as comic books. whenever they feel like it.
According to a report by AI experts, the internet is set to be overrun by AI-generated content in just a few years. Will this ruin content for the rest of time?
Will the internet just be AI-generated content?
A study by Europol, The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, claims that AI will be more prominent than human-made content very soon. The study explains that the vast expansion of AI tools means that we’ll have to deal with more AI-generated content than human-made content.
In the report, it’s claimed that humanity will be flooded with “synthetic media”. This is a new term for media that is fully generated by artificial intelligence programs, fuelled by bots designed to pump out as much content as possible.
According to Europol, “90% online content may be synthetically generated by 2026”. This means that social media platforms such as Instagram could be flooded with AI generated pet pictures by DALLE. Furthermore, Reddit threads could be populated by bots running GPT-3 chatbots. Even TikTok and YouTube videos could be entirely AI generated using automatic processes.
While synthetic media may end up being infuriating to scroll through, there’s more dangers associated with the move. Most importantly, the fact that disinformation can be spread easily via AI.
Read More: Is Midjourney AI free?
The disinformation machine
The report claims that synthetic media is filled with disinformation, spreading across social media such as TikTok. With synthetic AI-generated content typically consumed by younger crowds who can’t tell the difference, disinformation and propaganda can spread easily.
We’ve already seen AI tech such as deepfake be used to push political narratives that are untrue. For example, Russia created a fake deepfake of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy surrendering to crush Ukraine’s morale.
"Auditory and visual recordings of an event are often treated as a truthful account of an event,” the report states. “But what if these media can be generated artificially, adapted to show events that never took place, to misrepresent events, or to distort the truth?"
Disinformation has always been an issue on the internet, and it will get worse with AI-generated content. However, hopefully barriers will be put in place to limit the dangers AI poses… if that’s possible.