AI and Online Disinformation

Our social media feeds have been increasingly cannibalised by slop: low-quality content generated using AI text, image and video tools. Slop takes many forms, but in the UK it often promotes far-right narratives about immigration and Islam, becoming what some have dubbed "slopaganda". Although slopaganda is overtly political in its content, its motivations are usually commercial. Many social media accounts presenting themselves as British patriots are, in fact, operated from South Asia, where a booming cottage industry has emerged around the mass production of AI slop. In this Ethical Matters talk, reporter Niamh McIntyre takes us inside the AI slop factory, and explores what it means when a significant proportion of online political debate is manufactured for profit by people with zero commitment to the ideas they are promoting. Niamh McIntyre is a senior tech reporter at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, where she covers AI, labour and surveillance technologies. For the past eight months, she has been investigating the business model behind racist AI slop.