Dark Side Of The Boon: Dangers Of AI-Generated Content & Fake News

In this digital age, we are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence (AI) for a wide range of tasks, from simple things like preparing a powerpoint presentation to creating images to complex data analysis. But have you ever wondered- how reliable is the data? Despite the technology promising to be intelligent, the chatbots have been found to produce wrong facts and misleading data. At times it's nothing less than gibberish. The past year has seen a rise in concerns about blunders by prominent AI platforms.

THE RISE OF AI MISINFORMATION DURING ELECTIONS

2024 is a year of elections. Never before has the world seen so many polls in a single year. More than 2 billion voters set to go to the polls in 60 countries, including the U.S and India. Voters have a choice to make. To make informed decisions, many use the internet and AI driven chatbots to find information. But can these intelligent machines be trusted? There has been several instances where wrong facts have been churned out highlighting perils of the technological marvel, i.e. AI.

GEMINI TO RESTRICT ELECTION RELATED QUERIES

Last month, Google's AI chatbot, Gemini, provided a controversial answer regarding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's policies. The journalist Arnab Ray, who posted the same question about policies of former U.S president Donald Trump and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, got a more nuanced and balanced answer.

This quickly snowballed into a massive controversy and the Indian government reminded the technology behemoth that such an act was a violation of Indian information technology laws and criminal codes. Unable to provide satisfactory response and fearing a recurrence of such incidents, Google has begun restricting its Gemini AI chatbot from answering questions about the upcoming general elections in India and other countries.

On its blog Google says, "Out of an abundance of caution on such an important topic, we have begun to roll out restrictions on the types of election-related queries for which Gemini will return responses."

TRUSTING AI AT YOUR OWN RISK

Well Gemini isn't alone, other chatbots like Microsoft's Copilot and OpenAI's ChatGPT are prone to providing inaccurate or fabricated information, even when citing seemingly trustworthy sources. Another such instance is from Microsoft's Copilot, which falsely claimed German politician Hubert Aiwanger was involved in a COVID-19 misinformation controversy, confusing it with his past antisemitic leaflet incident from high school over 30 years ago.

These large language models are trained on massive datasets of text and code. While impressive in their fluency, these models can sometimes produce nonsensical outputs, particularly when asked complex or open-ended questions. Without any verification process with a direct interface, it is a slippery slope.

As AI systems continue to evolve, it is important that we remain vigilant and not blindly trust the information they provide. While AI can be a powerful tool, it has its limitations and potential biases. It is better to get information from trusted news websites and cross check any news which sounds a little hard to believe.