The Washington Post Democracy Dies in Darkness

The rise of AI fake news is creating a ‘misinformation superspreader’

AI is making it easy for anyone to create propaganda outlets, producing content that can be hard to differentiate from real news

December 17, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST
(iStock)
6 min

Artificial intelligence is automating the creation of fake news, spurring an explosion of web content mimicking factual articles that instead disseminates false information about elections, wars and natural disasters.

Since May, websites hosting AI-created false articles have increased by more than 1,000 percent, ballooning from 49 sites to more than 600, according to NewsGuard, an organization that tracks misinformation.